#love characters so trapped and doomed by the narrative that they’re already dead

[toxictrannyfreak]

Thinking about Matthias Nonius. Nonius as the one Gideon can never live up to. Nonius as Ortus’s ideal. Nonius as the Ninth’s last hero, what Harrow desperately needs to be. Nonius as the equal and rival of the Saint of Duty in all their forms. Nonius as the perfect cavalier; the one who fights for and obeys the Ninth out of unending duty, a millennium later. Nonius as what Harrow and Gideon and Ortus want to be, Nonius as the legend of the Ninth, Nonius as a poem, but never Nonius as a person. Nonius as a man entirely trapped by his own myth and memory and name. Nonius as Nonius, never Matthias, always and forever the Ninth. Nonius as a heap of bones forgotten long from home, free from the Ninth at last. Just. Just thinking about Matthias Nonius

[raichett]

Encore

I literally forgot I had this in my flash fic folder lmao. 

This flash fic can also be found on AO3 here.

---

ENCORE

“I’ve dug two graves for us,” Scar tells Grian one morning, the sun bloody red as it creeps up the broken skyline. The air is cold this morning, his worn jacket not thick enough to keep it out. “Planning ahead, you know?”

Grian blinks at him, then frowns, his brows furrowing, the stress lines forever crinkling around his eyes creasing deeper. The motion pulls at his face like gravity pulls an anchor down into the depths, suspended stillness dropping suddenly into motion before it freezes there, sunk into the silt, lodged in the debris and dead things degrading at the bottom of the ocean. “No one’s gonna be around to bury us,” he says.

Scar shrugs. “It’s the symbolism of it, really. Something profound to pick over and analyse. For them to talk about. The inevitability of tragedy. The way that neither of us can escape our fates because we were always doomed from the start. The closed circle of the narrative.”

“My, introspective today,” Grian comments. It’s tired. They’re both tired. Grian does not ask the reason, nor the occasion. There is none.

“Monologue scene,” Scar says anyway, as though in explanation. “Or, well, not a monologue? I think that requires only one character to be talking for a long time. I think other characters can be there? It’s been a while.”

“If it’s just one character on stage then it’s a soliloquy,” Grian says, turning his gaze back to the sunrise. It’s not an empty gaze, but it is a bit hollowed out. “This is more conversation than monologue. And – Scar. We’re not characters.”

He says it like a well-worn mantra, eroded around the edges. He believes in the factuality of the words, but he also believes that the difference between what he is and what he has been made into narrows with every game.

We’re not characters. And they’re not. But that doesn’t matter when another truth is in the eyes of each observer. Infinite truths, all true at once.

In some ways, on some level, you are who you present to the world, which face you choose to put on that day, which costume, which role. On another level, you are who the world perceives you as. Dance on that stage before they bury you under it. Go on. Do it.

Scar sits down next to him. The metal bench is ice-cold, one arm of it twisted off, leaving an end of broken metal ready to cut an unwary person spearing into the air, wet with morning dew, the opposite side from where Grian has sat. The ruins of the city rises up around them like the bare bones of ancient monsters found in the Nether, rebar and concrete and glass the ribs and spines and skulls of the latest death game world. “But we are on a stage,” he replies. “We’re playing a role. And we have an audience that’s always watching.”

It’s been a while since they’ve been dropped into a world that’s been so clearly already used. Once, there were people here, long, long ago; their graves have been repurposed since. Some might say desecrated, or disturbed, but Scar’s died enough times, had his remains – not just his body, but things and people he left behind – reused in ways he never would have himself, that he kind of just… can’t muster up the sympathy. They’re dead. Woo-hoo. They need to get over it.

(You’re trapped in a cycle of death, delivered and received in the farce of a competition with no prize.

You’re on someone else’s stage, playing someone else’s game, and they’re always changing the rules.

You’re going to feel dizzy with your own laughter and you’re going to suffer as you cry.

You’re going to love and then you’re going to die.

Woo-hoo. You need to get over it.)

Grian grimaces, but doesn’t disagree. “Yeah, well, let’s not quicken curtain-fall. You know what happened last time we cut the performance short.”

Scar winces. Yes, he does, and they never did it again. An audience deprived of their entertainment gets… cruel, in the next play. “Well, then, encore,” he says, softly, the words too tired to be bitter anymore. He makes an attempt at the performer’s voice he once liked to use to make his friends laugh, once upon a time, “Let us play a game of death. Again.”

“Again,” Grian echoes. “From Act One to the grave, whenever that ends up being. Encore.”

Grian links his fingers with Scar’s, letting silence fall over them like snowfall. In his mind’s eye, he can see this: the stage is dark save one spotlight, illuminating a bench, some sad string music lamenting in the background to emphasise the atmosphere. Scene end. Curtain-fall. Exeunt.

Over the skeletal skyline of a city of graves, more yet to come and two already dug, they watch the sun come up.

[doctorofmagic]

Strange #2 review

I already mentioned on the preview that I loved the fact that Jed understands and respects magic, allowing Clea to explain how hard it is for her to keep two mantles at the same time. She’s indeed struggling and I wonder if she’s only able to manage it because of her Faltine heritage.

Also, she’s worried about becoming a monster. I’ll get to that in a sec.

Okay so... I was definitely wrong. I assumed Harvestman was the one summoning the dead to fight for him but in fact he’s actually taking care of things that are going awry in the realm of the dead, Thunderstrike being one of them.

Clea just happened to sense the necromantic energy and they both ended up finding Thunderstrike, who is out of control for being possessed by countless souls.

As I also mentioned previously, Clea met Thunderstrike in Infinity Gauntlet and helped save his soul/body after it was shattered by Thanos. You can read this story in Doctor Strange - Sorcerer Supreme #35.

Back to the chapter, Clea is really pissed and I love how possesive she is here *chef’s kiss*

In the meantime, while they’re arguing, Thunderstrike, well, strikes. Clea is sorry that she has to hurt a friend, but he has to be stopped, mostly because of his mace. And so she pulls the Infinity War trick, cutting his arms off.

Harvestman finishes the job and cuts his head off, freeing the souls trapped in Thunderstrike’s body.

The chapter then follows as Clea tells Wong that Harvestman forbade her from bringing Stephen back to life. Honestly, this conversation is actually hilarious. Wong and Clea dissing Victor and Tony is GOLD, I love it.

They talk about how Death has her own “Sorcerer Supreme” to take care of her realm, which could be good for them since Death would be busy and not paying to attention to their quest. Wong also addresses Clea’s duties and she really doesn’t want to do any of that LMAO.

Clea be like:

Also they keep mentioning Victor and this is the peak of my existence. YES, PLEASE GO TAKE OVER DOOM AGAIN, CLEA, I’LL LOVE IT

Okay so the one knocking is a survivor from the Shrouded Bazaar. He says the Blasmephy Cartel took Clea’s warning as a bluff and returned with guns and magic, hurting people and destroying things. Clea and Wong head to the place.

And here we have Clea manifesting all her rage in HER FULL FALTINE FORM, LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

For those who do not know, she only manifests this form once, in Marvel Team-Up v1 #77, when she loses control inside the Orb of Agamotto.

We usually don’t see the Dormammu’s family in Faltine form, mostly because Umar decided to adopt human shape, whereas Clea is half-faltine, half- Mhuruuk (humanoid residents of the Dark Dimension). So that explains why she looks more human, not to the mention that she was absurdly nerfed for like, her entire existence as a character. Jed was the first one to tap into her true potential as a sorcerer and a Faltine. And I’m deeply grateful for that.

Now, the monster bit. I’m not sure if this is going to be part of the narrative, but I feel like Clea doesn’t want to embrace her “monster” side (as in, going full rage Faltine just like she did). If she is, then the more she’s denied, the more she’ll succumb to the monster. And you know me, mates. I’m always down for monster x person who loves the monster trope. I love corruption and I adore how love saves the OTP. Yes, count me in if this is the case.

Lastly... Mmmm... There’s only one criticism I’d like to make. This chapter felt too short. I see why, it’s Marcelo’s art and Jed’s writing style. It’s SUPER cool, don’t get me wrong. I love the dark and graphic style of limbs flying and epic fights. I adore my shounens, okay? And yet, at least mangas are release weekly (if you’re not reading Hunter x Hunter, that is). Thing is, I am not fed enough. If only the chapter was biweekly, I’d never complain about this. But bruh, I have to wait ONE MONTH for crumbs. I’m loving this series, I NEED MORE. Please give me more, PLEASE, I’M BEGGING. This gap between issue 1 and 2 was TORTURE uuuughhh.

That said, I’m glad that Nexus of Nightmares is coming in two weeks. FOOD AT LONG LAST.

Oh, wait, there’s another thing. A moot told me that there are some theories saying that Harvestman is actually Stephen working for Death (manipulated? controlled?), and I’m also all down for it. Y’all know me, I love that delicious angst mmmm~

[asleepinawell]

Book Recs

I was gonna do one of these at the end of the year, but I’ve somehow managed to read 26 books this year already (12 novellas, 14 novels), almost all featuring queer authors and/or characters so this is already a long list.

Note: There’s a few on here I was kind of meh about, but in most of those cases it was a ‘book might be good but it’s not for me so i’ll mention it to put it on people’s radar anyway’ type of thing. Insert the usual necessary tumblr disclaimer about all of this being only my opinion and your opinions are valid too etc etc.

In order of when I read them:

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir - Fantasy novella from the author of gideon the ninth that’s a twist on the classic princess trapped in a tower waiting for a prince story. Quite fun. (novella)

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht - Dark fantasy about revenge and magic. m/m couple but like I said it’s pretty dark and twisted all around so definitely not a happy queer romantic story. My opinion was interesting premise that could have been executed better and probably should have been a full novel to embellish on the world building potential. (novella)

A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine - Probably tied with murderbot as the best things I read this year. Scifi, f/f couple, wonderfully done exploration of what it means to fall in love with a culture that is destroying your own. More of the many queer anti-imperialist books that have come out recently and certainly some of the best. The second one is a direct continuation of the first. (2 novels)

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson - This is the third in the Baru Cormorant series (The Masquerade) and was my favorite so far. The second and third book were originally one book that got split I believe and the second book didn’t stand alone as well (though was still great), but the third book really made up for that. Dark fantasy world starring a queer woc whose country and culture is destroyed by the imperial forces of that world colonizing and assimilating them. She vows revenge and decides to work her way up within her enemy’s ranks to enact it from within and bring an empire to ruins. Really really fascinating study of so many different aspects of our own world and the systems which enable and allow bigotry and how bigoted and violent narratives are used to control minorities. This is definitely a darker series and I was particularly impressed with some of the commentary on the racism prevalent in non-intersectional feminism as depicted through a fantasy world. Can’t wait for the last one to come out! (3 novels, 1 forthcoming)

The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells - There’s six of them--5 novella and a novel--and the first is All Systems Red. Told from the point of view of a self-aware droid/android that is rented out by a corporation to provide protection in a dystopian capitalist hellhole future that isn’t that unlike our current capitalist dystopia but is in space. Muderbot hacked the chip that controlled it and instead of going rogue just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite tv shows. Murderbot is painfully relatable and the books are both funny and poignant. Highly recommended. (5 novellas and a novel).

Winter’s Orbit - Everina Maxwell - This was a m/m romance novel with a scifi backdrop of royal intrigue. Generally I’m more into scifi with a queer relationship in the background than vice versa, so it wasn’t my favorite, BUT I think it was still well written and someone looking for more of the romance angle would enjoy it. Has all your favorite romance tropes in it, especially the yearning. (novel)

The Divine Cities - Robert Jackson Bennett - Three book series. I’m very conflicted about this one. Set in a fantasy world where an enslaved nation overthrew the country enslaving them and now rules over them. It’s a story of what happens after the triumphant victory and within that it’s also a murder mystery tied into the dying magic of the conquered nation. It also has a six foot something naked oily viking man fist fight a cthulhu in a frozen river. The second book was by far my favorite, mostly due to the main character being brilliant. My conflict comes from the fact I don’t feel like the story treated its women and queer characters well. Like it had really great characters but it didn’t do great by them overall. That and the third book didn’t live up to the first two. But still definitely worth a read, can’t stress enough how cool some of the world building was. (3 novels)

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant - This might be the only one on here I disliked. It’s got a doomed boat voyage and creepy underwater terror and monsters and a super diverse cast of characters, but I just didn’t enjoy the writing style. While having a diverse cast is great, there were a lot of moments where it felt like characters were pausing to explain things about themselves that felt like a tumblr post rather than a normal conversation you might have while actively being hunted by monsters. I also bounced off all the characters. But a lot of people seem to have liked it so if you’re into horror and want a book with a f/f main couple then maybe you’ll enjoy it. (novel)

Dead Djinn Universe - P. Djèlí Clark - Around the early 1900′s, a man in Egypt discovers a way to access another world and bring Djinn and mysterious clockwork beings called Angels through. As a result, Egypt tells the British to get fucked and Cairo becomes one of the most powerful cities in the world. So Egypt, magic, djinn, a steampunk-ish vibe, oh and the main character is a butch queer woman who enjoys wearing dapper suits and looking fabulous while she investigates supernatural events. Her girlfriend is also mysterious and badass. And she has a cat. There’s three novella (one of which technically might be considered a short story) and then the first novel. You should absolutely read the novellas first (A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili, The Haunting of Tram Car 015). Super fun and imaginative series. (3 novellas and a novel, more forthcoming)

River of Teeth & Taste of Marrow - Sarah Gailey - From the book description

“In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true. Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two. This was a terrible plan.”

Queer hippo riders!!!! Very much a western but with hippos. Main couple included a non-binary character. Loved the first one. The second one I was more meh about due to one of the characters I was supposed to like having obnoxious man pain that a woman had to take the brunt of the whole time. Also there were less hippos. But queer hippo riders! Definitely read the first one, and they’re both novellas so no reason not to read the second as well. (2 novellas)

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers - I may be the only person who hasn’t read the long way to a small angry planet at this point, but I did grab her new novella and I loved it. It made me want to go sit out in the woods and feel peaceful. The world it’s set in feels like a peaceful post-apocalypse...or diverted apocalypse maybe. Humans built robots and robots gained sentience, but instead of rebelling they just up and left and went into the wilderness with a promise that the humans wouldn’t follow them.The remaining human society reshaped itself into something new and peaceful. It’s the story of a monk who leaves their habitual monking duties to go be a tea monk and then later wanders into the wilderness and becomes the first human in ages to meet a robot. Very sad there’s no fan art yet. (novella, more forthcoming)

The March North - Graydon Saunders - This was such a weird book that I’m not sure how to explain it. The prose style is hard to get used to and I suspect a lot of people will bounce off it in the first chapter. There’s no third person pronouns used at all and important events get mentioned once in passing and if you blink you’ll miss them. Set on a world where magic is extremely common to the point that rivers sometimes run with blood or fire and the local weeds are something out of a horror movie and most of the world is run by powerful sorcerer dictators, one country banded together (with the help of a few powerful sorcerers who were tired of all the bullshit) to form a free country where powerful sorcerers wouldn’t rule and the small magics of every day folks could be combined to work together. The story revolves around a Captain of the military force on the border who one day has three very powerful sorcerers sent to them by the main government with the hint that just maybe there’s about to be a big invasion (there is) with the implication of take these guys and go deal with this. The world building is extremely complex and very cool...when you can actually understand what the fuck is going on. There is also a murder sheep named Eustace who breathes fire and eats just about everything and is a Very Good Boy and belongs to the most terrifying sorcerer in the world who appears as a little old grandma with knitting. It had one of the most epic badass and wonderfully grotesque battles I’ve ever read. But yeah, it is not what I would call easy reading. Opinions may vary wildly. I did also read the second one (A Succession of Bad Days) in the series which was easier to follow and had a lot more details about the world, but overall I was more meh about it despite some cool aspects. The chapters and chapters of the extreme details of building a house that made up half the novel just weren’t my thing. (novels).

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson - In this world parallels universes exist and we’ve discovered how to travel between them, but the catch is you can only go to worlds where the ‘you’ there is already dead. This turns into an uncomfortable look at who would be the people most likely to have died on many worlds and how things like class and race would fit into that and what we would actually use this ability for (if you guessed stealing resources and the stock market you’d be correct). The main character is a queer woc who travels between worlds with the assistance of her handler (another queer woc) who she has the hots for. She accidentally stumbles on a whole lot of mess and conspiracy and gets swept up in that. Really enjoyed it. (novel)

Witchmark - C.L. Polk - Fantasy world reminiscent of Victorian England (I think?) where a young man with magical gifts runs away from his powerful family to avoid being exploited by them. He joins the army and fights in a war and comes home to try and live a quiet life as a doctor, but a murder pulls him into a larger mystery that upturns his life. Also he’s extremely gay and there’s a prevalent m/m romance. This one was a fun-but-not-mind-blowing one for me. (novel, 2 more in the series I haven’t read)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon - This was one of those that everyone loved but I couldn’t get into for some reason. I tried twice and only got about halfway through the second time. It’s got dragons and queer ladies and fantasy world and all the things I like, but I wasn’t that invested in the main story (which included the f/f couple) and was more interested in the smaller story about a woman trying to become a dragon rider. There are few things that beat out a lady and her dragon friend story for me and that was the storyline that felt neglected and took a different turn right when we got to the part I’d been waiting for. But, I know a lot of people whose reading opinions I respect who loved it, and if you like epic fantasy with dragons and queens and treachery and pirates and queer characters then I’d say you should definitely give it a try. (novel)

Bonus: I didn’t read these series this year, but if you haven’t read them yet, you should.

Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice) - Ann Leckie - Spaceship AI stuck in a human body out for revenge for their former captain, but that summary does not come close to doing it justice. Another one examining imperialism and also gender and race.(3 novels)

Kushiel's Legacy Series - Jacqueline Carey - This is two series, six books total, and starts with Kushiel's Dart. Alternate universe Renaissance-y Europe in a fantastical world where sex isn't shameful and sex workers are respected and prized. Lots of political intrigue and mystery. A lot of BDSM and kinky stuff too (the main character is a sexual masochist, oh and also bi!). I first read this series when I was fifteen or sixteen and it definitely made a big impression on me. Same author also wrote the Santa Olivia series which I’d also recommend. (6 novels)

The Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir - I mean, if you follow me, you know. If you don’t follow me you still probably know. I’d have felt remiss to have left them off though. Lesbian Necormancers in Space. Memes! Skeletons! Biceps! Go read them. (2 novels, 2 forthcoming, 1 short story)

Books On My To Read List:

Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

This Is How You Lose the TIme War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee

Also, if anyone has any recs for scifi/fantasy books starring queer men (not necessarily having to do with a queer relationship) and written by queer men I’d love them. There’s a lot written by women, and some of them are great, but I’d love to read a story about queer men from their own perspective.

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 137: 4x16

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

March 19, 2022

4x16: On The Head of a Pin

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: Mike Rohl

Original air date: March 19, 2009

Plot Synopsis:

Castiel and Uriel ask Dean to torture Alastair for information. But when Alastair breaks free, Castiel starts to believe that there is a traitor among the angels.

Features:

Angels being murdered, Cas’ guilt, the tortured becoming the torturer, Alastair reveals the First Seal, an angelic exorcism, Sam killing Alastair, Uriel’s worship of Lucifer and conversion of angels.

My Thoughts:

Okay first of all, I apologize for the length of the “Notable Lines” section below, but in my defense, every single line of this script could basically be included. I already made some cuts and we’re still here.

This is perhaps a perfect episode of this show. It’s certainly in the running for my favourite episode of all time, up there with The Man Who Would Be King. I’ll let you know at the end of Stacked, but I was restraining myself from just screaming and making incoherent noises the entire time since I was watching with other people.

All of my favourite parts of season 4 are exemplified in this episode. Dean’s Hell trauma, Alastair, Cas being a badass, Cas being on the brink of rebellion, halo imagery, Sam’s demon blood powers, Ruby being manipulative, Uriel being manipulative, God being an absent father, and so many raw lines of dialogue that I literally cannot choose a favourite.

Season 4 Cas hits SO hard for me. I love Cas all the time, I love him in the later seasons with Jack and when he’s softened and become more human, but there’s something about how hard he wants to believe in Heaven, about how much he’s already feeling about Dean, that is super tantalizing to watch. I love him begging for a leader in Anna. I love that when Dean first starts torturing Alastair, we see Cas in a wideshot with dark objects between him and the viewer, figuratively the one who’s trapped. The shot where he’s haloed by the streetlight and it’s flickering as he contemplates rebelling and following Anna is one of my favourite shots in the entire series. And thanks to season 15, we know that at this point he’s already in love with Dean, even if he doesn’t know that that’s what those feelings are. After all, he already expressed that he has doubts way back in 4x07. According to the spnwiki, this was also the episode that Cas was supposed to die in (presumably where Alastair says he wants to kill him but can only send him back to Heaven is where it would have happened), but he was so popular with the fans that they kept him instead and started giving him Anna’s plots. So this is also the first time that Cas as a character breaks out of the narrative that was prepared for him, within the narrative by expressing doubt and in a meta sense by refusing to be killed by the writer’s room. Also insane insane insane that this happened by him being impaled through the back by a hook/rebar on a wall by an enemy. I completely forgot that that had happened. Wow.

Jensen Ackles’ acting is as good as it gets in this episod, as is the actor who plays Alastair’s. The way both of their faces twitch when they’re hearing something that scares them but trying to play it off. Demon’s in this season were still incredibly scary, Alastair’s scenes still freak me out 13 years later.

@Meg3point0 and I both think that Alastair is lying about John not breaking (he’s been dead for more than 10 months in canon at this point, and why would they give up torturing him after 100 years?). What better torture than to tell Dean that not only will he never live up to his father’s legacy, but that he’s also doomed the world at the same time?

Notable Lines:

“Uriel's the funniest angel in the garrison. Ask anyone.”

“My superiors have begun to question my sympathies. [...] I was getting too close to the humans in my charge. You. They feel I've begun to express emotions. The doorways to doubt.”

“You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out.”

“You left part of yourself back in the Pit. Let's see if we can get the two of you back together again, shall we?”

“Daddy’s little girl, he broke. He broke in thirty. Oh, just not the man your daddy wanted you to be, huh, Dean?”

“I carved you into a new animal, Dean. There is no going back.” “Maybe you’re right. But it’s my turn to carve.”

“What you’re feeling? It’s called doubt.”

“And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.”

“For the first time, I feel…” “It gets worse.”

“Strange how a leaky pipe can undo the work of angels when we ourselves are supposed to be the agents of fate.”

“Our father? He stopped being that, if he ever was, the moment he created them. Humanity, his favourites.”

“There is no will. No wrath. No God.” “Maybe. Or maybe not. But there's still me.”

“It's not blame that falls on you, Dean, it's fate.”

“I guess I’m not the man either of our dads wanted us to be.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 10

IMdB Rating: 9.1

In Conclusion: Ben Edlund is my BEST FRIEND.

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[thekisforkeats]

Killing Care and Grief of Heart (Let all the Broken Pieces Shine, Chapter One)

Info: The Magnus Archives, D&D AU. JonMartin in this chapter, more ships to be added. Rated T. Post-Canon. Jon is amab nb and uses they/them, Martin is a trans guy.

CWs: Character death, stabbing, grief, webs, manipulation, apocalypses, alternate realities 

Summary: MAG 200 from Martin’s viewpoint, setting up what is to come after. The idea of Martin being Orpheus and Jon being Eurydice comes from the poem “Eurydice’s Retort” by Aiden. The poem quoted is the last stanza of Margaret Atwood’s "Orpheus 1" from Selected Poems II: 1976-1986, published 1987. The chapter title is a line from William Shakespeare's Orpheus.

-------------------------------------------------------

It’s easier than Martin had thought it would be, killing Jon.

He’s thought about it before, of course, and well before he walked through his own Domain and spoke to the other version of himself. Thoughts of Jon’s death have been a constant companion for the weeks (months? years?) they’ve been walking through the Apocalypse, and for more than a year even before that.

Keeping Jon alive was the whole reason he kept working for Peter Lukas, after all.

The first time he thought about the idea that he might wind up responsible for Jon’s death was some time after they went through Oliver Banks’ Domain, the one with all the roots. Jon had been waxing philosophical that night(?), while they were resting in one of the between-places. They’d gotten to talk about the classics, about story and narrative, about how the dream-logic of everything they were dealing with could be understood through the lens of myth and metaphor.

That was when Martin had brought up Orpheus and Eurydice, pointed out that Jon had played Orpheus in diving into the Lonely to bring Martin out. He had quoted Margaret Atwood’s poem, the one from Eurydice’s point of view. Jon, of course, had never read the poem (and honestly, how is he so in love with someone who could barely stand to read anything once, let alone twice), had questioned Martin as to why he liked it so much. (Martin’s answer: melancholy. It’s about Eurydice not really wanting to come back to the world of the living, after all.)

“But you didn’t want to stay there, not really,” Jon had said, looking perplexed.

“Well… no… I mean, I sort of did while I was in there, but once you got me back out…” Martin had sighed. “It fits, that’s all I mean, and it was the first time you’d really used your powers the way you’ve been doing here. You killed Peter Lukas, you drew me out of his Domain, you’ve been doing it ever since. You’re Orpheus.”

Jon had looked at him for a long moment, with those piercing eyes that always took Martin’s breath away, and then said, “That’s ridiculous. I could never make the mountains bow themselves when I did sing.” (Of course he knew Shakespeare, and Martin did love Shakespeare but in this case he really did prefer Atwood), and then Jon was smiling at him and saying, “You’re Orpheus, love.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Martin had countered. “You’re the one who went in there to rescue me. You’re the one who led me out. Forget the Lonely, I’d have been lost in the tunnels forever without you.”

“Ah, but,” and Jon had put up a finger, “I’m the one who actually died.” He’d grinned, as if he were winning something. “I died, and you could not stand the thought, and so you dove into the underworld of whatever plot Peter and Jonah had concocted, and you sang your sweet words at them, and charmed them, and pulled me out of the hell they were trying to trap me in.”

“But… you’re the one who led me out of the Lonely,” Martin had repeated, baffled.

“Yes,” Jon had said softly, “and the problem with Orpheus and Eurydice was always that Orpheus could not trust that she would return to him. He went into the underworld to begin with because he didn’t trust that the gods would reunite them when he died. When he was leading her out he could not trust that it hadn’t been a trick, that he hadn’t lost her, and so he turned around to be sure. His doubts brought everything crashing down around them.” His gaze had been gentle, soft, maybe a little chiding. “If Eurydice had been leading the way, and Orpheus could have seen her the whole time, they would have made it out together.”

The thing neither of them had said aloud was that in the end, whatever Martin had done to pull Jon out of the “underworld” of Jonah’s plans hadn’t worked. The entire world had fallen in around them instead.

Jon had kept the thing alive since then, occasionally calling Martin ‘his Orpheus,’ usually when Martin was making up some ridiculous doggerel to amuse them both. And Martin didn’t mind, and was honestly somewhat flattered, but it started something gnawing at him. Two things, really: first, that Orpheus was the hero of the tale, and Martin did not want to be the hero, did not want to be the one upon whom all responsibility sat. Making choices for himself was all good and well; he didn’t like the feeling of maybe having to make choices for all of humanity.

The second was the nagging, aching remembrance that in every version of the myth Orpheus ultimately loses Eurydice. Death will not be overcome for long, no matter how charming one’s music. The idea that Jon would die to end this Martin had considered more than once. He hated the thought, and would rather die himself than see his lover sacrificed once more.

The idea that Martin himself would have to kill Jon to save the world? It fit perfectly. He knew it fit the moment he first thought of it, and it felt as if his heart were breaking in slow motion ever since.

Orpheus could not return to the world of light and joy with his Eurydice, after all. It just didn’t work that way, no matter how they twisted and turned to try to avoid the truth.

When they’d made a plan Jon had not wholly acquiesced to, Martin had felt that throbbing ache in his chest again. When he’d gone to talk to Jon, and hugged him, and Jon had talked about how everything was his fault… he knew. He just knew, and he did not like the decision he could feel settling in his chest. Jon was going to do something stupid, and Martin was going to have to be the one to fix it.

He could not trust Jon. That was the long and the short of it, he’d thought, as he’d stood there holding the smaller man in his arms, listening to his sniffles. And because he could not trust Jon, he’d stopped when he should have been following the other man, and turned to the others, and told them to go and blow up the gas main now. He’d turned away, and when he’d looked back, Jon was out of his sight and too far gone for Martin to catch up in time to stop him from killing Jonah Magnus and taking his place in the Panopticon.

Ironically enough, this time what doomed Orpheus was looking away from his lover, instead of looking at him.

So now Jon is in the Panopticon, because he could not be anything but self-sacrificing, and because Martin could not trust him long enough to just go after him, could not trust that he would have been able to talk Jon out of killing Jonah once they’d got up there. He’s in the tower, hooked in as the Pupil of the Eye, and Georgie’s lit the gas main already, and the whole thing is blowing up while Jon screams in pain.

For just a moment, Martin has a fleeting memory of Basira telling him that she’d convinced the police not to just burn the Institute to the ground, and oh, if she hadn’t done that…

Well, no use for that now.

For everything Martin’s said, every moment he’s refused, aloud, to admit that he could kill Jon if he had to, he’s known for some time now that he can if he must. He’s thought about it over and over, turning over everything, thinking about how to kill the Archivist. The answer is simple and obvious. Jon already gave it to him, before they’d left the Institute, and it’s narratively appropriate in that dream-logic mythic way the Fears work. So he knows what he has to do.

Martin pulls Jon out of the Panopticon, and they say they love each other, and they kiss. And then Martin pulls Jon’s head back and stabs him swiftly, once in each eye. Jon only gasps once, the first time, and maybe he’s already dead by the time Martin stabs the other, but he won’t take the chance of leaving the job half-done. It’s clear that it was the right choice--stabbing someone in the eye shouldn’t kill them so quickly, but the Eye was all that was keeping Jon alive, and so he’s dead now, gone.

And so, Martin thinks, Orpheus loses his Eurydice. Atwood’s poem echoes in his mind:

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a gray moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.

Martin sobs, then, just once, and he’d keep sobbing but there’s a rising static, the sort he’s used to hearing while listening to the tapes. And then he sees that actual tape has come into the Panopticon writhing up from between cracks and over stone to wrap itself around Jon, around his legs and arms, trying to drag him away.

Martin cannot speak, he’s too wracked with grief, but he’s damned if he’ll let the Web take Jon from him, not now. Wherever Jon is going, he’s going too. That was the deal. So as the web of magnetic recording tape grabs Jon and pulls him through the air like he’s some sort of insect to be wrapped up and devoured, Martin holds him tighter, refusing to let go.

The tapes are somehow strong enough to pull them both out of the Panopticon, through the air, across the landscape. There are other things being pulled toward wherever they’re going, a thousand or a million, too many to count. Martin can see the web of magnetic tape criss-crossing the landscape, touching all the places they’ve been, the Domains they’ve traveled through, the avatars they’ve encountered. He can see with eyes that should have belonged to the Web had Peter Lukas not gotten hold of him and claimed him for the Lonely. He can see the extent of it all, the scope of the plan, the thing the Web had wanted all along--the Fears, bound up by the Archivist’s Knowing, connected by the tapes at a thousand little points, dragged screaming out of this reality toward the hole at Hilltop Road.

For a moment it strikes Martin as a thing of beauty. Wretched, horrid beauty, but beauty nonetheless. A plan at least three decades in the making, finally come to perfect fruition. Reality re-made in order to allow the Fears to manifest strongly enough for the Web to bind them and pull them out and… ascend.

They fall toward the hole, and then into the hole, and then suddenly Jon spasms in Martin’s arms. Martin clutches him more tightly so as not to lose him, so he’s right there when Jon’s mouth opens and sound begins pouring out. Words, but more than words, and none in his own voice. It’s as though he’s become the tape recorder, playing a statement. People talking--Basira and Georgie and Melanie. The world is safe, it seems. The plan worked. And maybe it’s better than Jon’s dead, because surely whatever the people who remembered ‘the Archivist’ would have done to him would have been far more painful and horrific than Martin stabbing him in the eyes.

The Admiral’s okay. Martin wishes Jon were alive, so he could know that much at least.

The voices echo in the darkness they’re falling through. Basira’s voice: “What do you want me to do with this?” She must mean the recorder she found in the ruins.

Georgie replies, “Leave it. We’re done with tapes.”

“Want me to smash it?” That’s Melanie, because of course it is.

Basira says, “I think… we can probably just turn it off.”

Martin can almost hear the shrug in Melanie’s voice. “Okay.”

There are footsteps, two pairs, presumably Melanie and Georgie walking away.

Basira addressed the tape recorder. “If anyone’s listening… goodbye. I’m sorry, and… good luck.”

There’s a final flick, and then Jon actually speaks, despite being dead, the words resonating in the darkness:

“STATEMENTS END.”

Martin almost sobs, clutching Jon, eyes squeezed tight. He’s not sure he ever liked Basira much, and he really barely knew Georgie and Melanie--and really it’s been so hard, for so long, to be sure he liked anyone much, aside from Jon--but he takes the good wishes for what they are, clasps them into his heart. Wherever the Web is taking them, it has to be better than what they’re leaving behind.

Wherever it is, Martin is sure there won’t be any more recorders, any more statements. They, too, are done with tapes.

Next Chapter

[weaselbeaselpants]

Hazbin Hotel Review part 2: Mistakes were made please don’t kill me

This pilot is polarizing at the moment. In between the two sides of the anti-fanbase (ppl crying “if you like HH you’re homophobic”, or the BWW with it’s cringey politics), you have lots of fans who are falling over themselves about how good this is. If you love Hazbin unconditionally that’s fine, but here’s the thing:

I like it too.

I’m the kind of person who’s naturally critical, pokes harmless fun at what I like, and is always rewriting and reimagining things within the fandoms I like. I want to be a ‘Hazbin’ fan but I don’t know if I’m allowed to since the fanbase can be so staunchly overprotective and Viv herself has said she doesn’t like criticism, no matter how valid or done in good faith.

Tbh, that’s why the drama revolving around @frootrollup1​ upsets me: the fandom is fine with lumping all criticism or redesign stuff in the realm of ignorant hate, when redesign, rewrites, revamps and other fan dribble are kind of a labor of love onto itself in other fandoms. Guess that’s a talk for later though.

With all this in mind, let me go over my thoughts:

There’s no PROPER establishment of Hell as a place, setting, world, or proper establishment of the characters.

The armor-piercing question Hazbin needs to be asked is this:

“is this a generic version of Hell we should all be familiar with and need no introduction to, OR is this a unique take that requires it’s own rules?”

^ It feels like the latter but we don’t get a good rundown of said rules. Besides that, characters are one note and serve either no purpose or become flies on the wall to other characters’ purpose.

Things were said and places were shown but we honestly don’t get a good idea of Hell by the end of the pilot. It’s a ritzy(?) place where souls of the damned literally become demons and then get purged. I THINK. I THINK, that’s what the writer’s were going for here. TBH, it feels like they’re skipping ahead and thinking of the show as a finished, fully realized product with developed characters and plots already, and not an introduction to a series/standalone piece.

If I didn’t have some inkling or the lore prior to watching it, I wouldn’t have known that the demons sans-Charlie were once human. Angel says in passing in the car that he’s already dead, but really references to the fact that they were once human are rare.

Now I’m a simple woman - I ain’t picky with mah demonology - But, call me crazy, when I think Hell I don’t think of the people who end up there turning into demons, I think of people going there to be tortured. That’s the hell I’m used to seeing and is prevelant in like every religion that has a hell. Taking a spin on that and making demons the souls of sinners trapped in hell? A-okay, but I NEED MORE. Instead of talking in a car or spending time on this lolsofuny demon turf war, we really needed more time given to the fact that Vaggie, Angel, and others were once human. No, I don’t want a full flashback, but it would give us a better grasp of the mechanics of sin in this world if these two characters told a little bit more themselves than just having some lines offhandedly explaining how everything works. 

EX- How to do revamp of a familiar setting right while still leaving certain details vague? One Word: Hadestown. 

Hadestown doesn’t need to give you all the details of it’s setting cause that’s not the point. You don’t need to know if the workers of Hadestown are literally dead, metaphorically dead, or both or where other gods live. Those aren’t the things we need to know for the musical to progress. What we need to know is Hades’ underworld is a mining colony of doom, that Hades buys peoples souls so the workers can never leave, that Persephone and Hades are on the rocks which is messing up the seasons, and that oop! Eurydice had to go back. Between the commonplace to complex knowledge westerners have of Greek mythology and the revamped Prohibition-era setting, all is explained that we the audience need explained.

I have the feeling Hazbin Hotel wanted the same thing: explain what needs to be explained for the currant plot and leave bits and pieces in the dark. It just didn’t really work.

The flow of the narrative was bad.

So apparently on the PizzaPartyPodcast Vivziepop admitted there were things that were moved around or turned out rushed.

Fair enough but even with that excuse can someone please tell me why they thought it was a good idea to start the story after Angel has already been made a patron of the hotel?

Getting to know not only how the world works first and foremost, but who our main character (Charlie) is and what she is doing (the hotel), would be the easiest way to drop us into the action of the story and get the ball rolling. But instead we start off with an intro song that sort of shows us what this world is like but doesn’t explain anything about who or what we’re seeing until the newscasters come in. Angel’s introduced in this time and the build up and execution of this character is poor, rushed, and feels more like writers fudging around with a character they like than giving us, the audience, a proper introduction*.

After that, I’m sorry to say the spots where the story picks up, drifts off, lulls about, or comes around all kind of melt into this big slurry the characters are drowning in, without any real care for telling a story. BUT THIS IS A STORY!!!

This is not a little menagerie of random characters ala the Pastoral Symphony from Fantasia. This is not a collection of little things just for the fun of it to get to to know these people (it does a bad job at getting you to know these guys). This is a three act structure. I can tell where the intro, rising action, climax, and falling action are SUPPOSED to be, but they don’t stand out, don’t do their job, and melt into the fluff in a way that makes the emotional impact we’re supposed to feel null somehow...

The pacing was bad. 

While some scenes go by far too quickly others go on for faaaaaaar too long. These are the bits that don’t surprise me when I hear this pilot was changed around, cut down, or fudged with a bit.

Scenes like this include Charlie’s back and forth with Katie Killjoy before and after her song, Charlie and Vaggie’s fight in the car, Alastor explaining himself to Charlie and Vaggie trying to talk him out of it, ALL of the Ser Pentious/Cherry Bomb terf fight bits.

Oddly, it feels like these parts are trying REALLY hard to get a point across but they end up being more of a hindrance to this otherwise snappy dialogue and supposedly simple set up. This pilot is 20+ minutes, but the bits we need to endear ourselves to our main cast are squandered on what the writers thought was “fun to write” at the time.

Too many characters, even in a 20 minute pilot. 

Instead of getting a good idea of our leads, everyone is treated with the same level of importance or interest in a world that hasn’t even been fully introduced yet.

The truly important supporting characters to Charlie, Vaggie, Angel, and Alastor are Husk, Katie, and Nifty. Katie provides conflict to the first half of Charlie’s story, while Husk and Nifty are hires by Alastor for the hotel; they establish his power over other demons and his influence on the hotel and it’s success. Sir Pentious and Cherry Bomb needed to be cameos. Their characters should be glorified plot contrivances/resolutions, No More. I ain’t gonna care about a cast of billions from the start. We gotta start small first. Not only do we have four mains, we also have a bunch of little guys who need to eat up screen time...except they absolutely don’t need to and should be simple background cameos for now.

Sir Pentious and Cherry Bomb get as much character time as the four mains even though Angel is underdeveloped and Alastor is overdeveloped. When it comes to storytelling - unconventional or otherwise - priorities, is what this pilot needs.

Angel basically does nothing after Alastor is introduced. 

Of all the characters in Hazbin to get left in the dust (lol) and be underdeveloped, Angel Dust would be my last guess. He’s popular with his creator and with the fandom but because of how the pilot is set up, his character falls to the back-burners and is kind of unnecessary: (Charlie uses him as an experiment to see if she can reform a sinner but he doesn’t hold up, so when Alastor comes into play the focus of Charlie’s plan switches almost entirely to Alastor and Angel is unneeded). If this were two episodes of a series; one about Charlie getting to know and trying to “fix” Angel, and another about Alastor coming in and taking over, that’d be fine. But this is a pilot so the plot and character development is kinda crushed in and neither Angel nor his existence amounts to much of anything.

I honestly forgot Angel was even in the latter half of the pilot. The poor demon-spider whore dies on the way to his home planet.

Not to fan-blurb here but I think it’d be more interesting if the conflict in the latter half wasn’t Vaggie trying to warn Charlie away from Alastor but Angel feeling shown up by Alastor and him being the one protesting to Alastor’s take-over of the hotel. It would have given Angel more to do and would cement him as one of our four leads.

Alastor gets a backstory because he is A) not the character I thought they were going for, or B), they’re jumping the gun on him. Alastor is a maddening character in my book because if he’s the character I thought he was supposed to be - our main villain - then they royally messed up a good villain by explaining his story. If he ISN’T the main villain, than color me confused on what he’s supposed to be. 

It goes without saying that a good villain should remain somewhat mysterious throughout the rising action, which is what the pilot is building up to (I think?). Alastor’s personality makes him an absolutely wonderful villain and probably the most outwardly “demon”-like of anyone in Hell. Him being a rogue demon that scares the inhabitants of Hell should be alluded to, not stated.

Vaggie and Angel get passing “we dead” bg but our villain gets a backstory dumped on him? For the standalone pilot this episode is, his backstory doesn’t do anything for the plot. For the rest of the series, this feels like a big waste to reveal this guy’s history over anyone else. The rest of the HH cast are sorta small stereotypes and cliches that the writers want to endear to us because of what they do and what they go through, though since there’s too many of them they end up just being there. Alastor, on the other hand, is where they hit gold and really have a character who oozes personality and the feel of their show...but they kind of taint him by giving him an unneeded (at this point) history.

Big problem with him not only being explained but him outright stating his intentions with the hotel.

Maybe I’m wrong and Alastor is not the bigbadvillain in a cast of villains...in which case I don’t know what the pilot wants us to think of him or where the show’s going with him. Is he a demonic version of Harold Hill who learns to care about ppl and gets redeemed? Maybe that will change with future episodes....

Hazbin is confusing as a person not privy to the franchise/development prior ,and feels disappointing from the pov of someone getting hyped for these characters. As a follower of the project it feels like a let down to the respective characters and plots we’ve been anticipating. While, as newcomer, it’s hard to care about anyone. My sister, who had far less info on the pilot than me, was watching it the whole time going “who are you?” and by the end said “why should I care?” Really good summary from this IMDB review here:

Little harsh but my thoughts exactly.

TL;DR: The writers need to really rethink how to introduce their world to newcomers AND fans alike. -

There’s so much passion in Hazbin Hotel but I feel it’s misaimed and a prime example of why “write/draw what you like and what sounds ‘fun’!!!!” isn’t a good idea for storytelling.

There’s technically a story in Hazbin Hotel, but because of the bad pacing and lackluster approach to world and character development, for the kind of project that it is, it’s not very good. 

-

Again, for the people in the back: if you think I’m a bully because I happen to be harsh with my criticism, sorry but harsh critique isn’t the same thing as bad faith criticism (CinemaSins, NC, Bad Webcomics Wiki) and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t lump me in with those turds because I don’t love every second of this. I may not be the best writer, but storytelling is my passion and I think this dropped the ball. IT DOESN’T MEAN I HATE IT. - Alternatively, if you love Hazbin unconditionally or disagree with me on these things: great! Like what you like as long as everything’s safe, which it is. Stuff is problematic but hey so is everything look at the stuff I like. Also, if you’re one of those people who unironically says “if you like HH than I’m blocking you teehee unfollow me”, you fittingly have a very special seat in hell set up for you. Don’t threaten my friends cause you don’t like something they like. =)

[mittensmorgul]

Hiya: If there's been conversation about Nick/Lucifer I've missed it, sorry. I can't figure out where they're going with him - there's a reason he's still around, surely, but so far his story seems to be rudderless. Sarah's little monologue suggests that Nick's Lucifer experience is significant going forward. What are your thoughts?

Hello! And sorry it took so long for me to reply to this, but I wanted to approach it from several directions and cover this as completely as possible, so I’m now fortified with cookies and caffeine, and will hopefully do as thorough a job as possible while also demonstrating that I am prepared to fend off any and all wank with this here big stick *waves large stick in the air*. :P

I don’t normally like to use the production side of things to justify the narrative, but in this particular case, I think it’s CRUCIAL to keep in mind when considering anything having to do with Nick. Here’s a few “production specific” bullet points to bear in mind:

Eugenie really enjoys writing this specific character, for whatever twisted reason.

therefore I personally like to imagine the rest of the production staff roll their eyes and let her have him to play with over in a corner, which interestingly enough keeps her from mucking about with the characters we all actually care about

J2 specifically asked to have more time off. That’s why we have a 20 episode season this year (and I think we would’ve had an even shorter season if wayward had been picked up, but their compromise to sign on for even 20 episodes was explicitly to get more time off to spend with their families). Have you wondered also why there’s been a lot more scenes that ONLY had Sam or Dean in them? Why they’ve been separated for a lot of the season? Because one of them has been having nice days off with their family while the other has been filming. In order to have episodes where they’re together, the compromise is that some of the focus go to other characters so they can both have time off still... and sadly, Nick fits the bill for “available for scenes alone.”

Enter cries of “BUT WHAT ABOUT CAS! WHAT ABOUT MARY OR THE WAYWARDS?! WHY NICK?!”

*points everyone back to that first bullet point*

So now that some of that real-world nonsense is out of the way, I really do think that they’ve been actively making the most of this objectively terrible character that most of us have utterly failed to connect to in any way, because he is just so damn terrible.

I personally LOVED Davy’s treatment of him last week, and how Nick’s own story had been paralleled to Sam’s since the beginning of the season. Not for Nick’s sake, but FOR SAM’S.

I wrote some about that here:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182308756300/love-that-your-nick-tag-says-possibly-murderous

But this week’s episode goes several steps beyond that. Since 5.01, Nick’s entire deal with Lucifer had been predicated on his desire to be reunited with his murdered family. He’d been dismally living in the house where they’d been murdered, with his child’s crib still sitting there, drinking himself to sleep at night, unable to move on past their deaths. It was implied in s14 that he’d even been a suspect in their murders, but he was cleared after having the alibi that he’d been out drinking while they were killed.

And yet, when he thinks back to why he said Yes to Lucifer, he doesn’t remember the promise to be reunited with his wife and son, he remembers Lucifer telling him he was special and chosen. Which I think is really telling:

NICK: I just don’t know what kind of pain would make me allow Lucifer to possess me.CAS: It was your family.NICK: My family? Sarah and Teddy?[CAS nods.]NICK, gasping: No. [NICK flashes back to Sympathy for the Devil (5.01). We see these scenes along with current NICK as he remembers]SARAH/LUCIFER, in flashback: It’s you, Nick. You’re special. You’re chosen. Nick, I need you to say “yes”.NICK, in flashback: Then yes.NICK, now: Oh my god. Who could do that? Who could do that?

Because even his reason for saying yes was this sort of personal aggrandizement of being “special” and “chosen,” even if he’d always framed it as being this revenge quest on behalf of his murdered family. That’s what Sam had been sympathizing with, at any rate-- the fact that they’d both been manipulated into saying yes, and both had these familial/loved ones murdered to force them into participating in this awful cosmic game. But personal grandiosity had NEVER been one of Sam’s motivations for saying yes. He’d felt personally BETRAYED when Lucifer revealed the extent to which his entire life had been nudged into place by demons, you know? He HATED the fact he’d been “chosen” and felt it was more of a curse than something special.

But not Nick. He may have said he wanted justice for his wife and son, but the truth kept coming out of him throughout s14:

He beat his neighbor to death in the exact manner his family was killed, because the neighbor told police he’d seen someone at Nick’s house, and then recanted his statement.

because what he’d seen was a POLICE OFFICER entering and then leaving the house, and he was not prepared to testify against a cop

Nick kills Arty’s priest for refusing to divulge what Arte confessed to him about the man he saw, but learns about the cop from a reporter he interviewed later

Nick then tracks down the retired officer, who tells him he was possessed by the demon Abraxis and had no memory of the murders. The man had been used just as badly as Nick himself, and yet Nick killed him ANYWAY even though he’d been tormented about his part in all of this for more than a decade.

After killing the cop, Nick confesses that he said he just wanted revenge, but that it was a lie, and he liked being evil this way

He pleads with Lucifer to come back to him

He then goes on a rampage to find Abraxas, to ask him (ostensibly) who ordered him to kill his wife. He kills his way through other demons until he discovers where Abraxas is, in a puzzle box trapped by Mary Winchester.

And this is where everything falls apart for him

Once he learns that Lucifer ordered his family killed-- not because he was special, but because he was convenient-- he had one final chance to repent for what he’d done in the name of vengeance. And he failed to take it.

Instead of accepting that all of this was a horrific abuse, and that this was the most justice he or his loved ones could possibly get, and trying to make peace with himself and try to do the best he can with what he now has (including the support of the Winchesters, who are arguably the people on the planet most inclined to sympathize with what Nick has been through), he rejects ALL of that.

He prays to Lucifer, begging for answers that he technically already has. But he just cannot let go of it. It ceased being about justice for his wife and son a long, long time ago. It’s only about him, now.

He’s mad at Lucifer for hurting HIM. He’s mad at the fact his wife and son were murdered, not because it wasn’t fair to THEM, but because they were taken away from HIM. Which is all proven out in how he treats the ghost of his wife in 14.12.

He returns to his home, where he has to break in. He doesn’t have a key anymore, and still, the house is sitting empty and abandoned, where nobody else has wanted to live since. Compare that to the Winchester family house in 1.09. Despite the tragedy there, it’s still inhabited. Life goes on there, and after 1.09, when the ghosts of its past are finally laid to rest, it has a chance for a happy family to live and thrive there again. Nick’s place is just stagnant with the ghost of his dead wife trapped there, wearing a nightgown so similar to Mary Winchester’s.

I thought it was strange that this incarnation of Sarah’s actual ghost had long hair, while the vision of Sarah that Lucifer used in 5.01 to woo Nick in the first place had short hair, and I think it was intentional... making her look like the sad, dark version of Mary Winchester. This was Sarah’s big moment, her chance to finally be released from the misery of being trapped in that house as a ghost... and she failed, because Nick failed HER on every level.

Sarah: My unfinished business isn't just about how I died, Nick. It's you. I was here that night. I saw what he did to you. I... You chose Lucifer. You wanted him. You... You still do.Nick: He chose me, okay.Sarah: You didn't come here to find peace. You came here to find him in the place you became one with him.Nick: No.Sarah: Then show me I'm wrong. Reject Lucifer right now. If you do, I can leave. I can find peace. Reject him, Nick. Please. Please!Nick: I-I can't. I'm sorry.Sarah: You can't. Because you are him. You doomed me to stay in this place forever. You've doomed yourself.

Nick is flim-flam-- on a meta level, on a personal level, on every level. He’d never been seeking her, which is why he bought into Lucifer’s deal. He wanted to be special, and up to the point Lucifer came to him, he’d only felt worthless. That’s what made him useful to Lucifer. He could buy into his own lie that it was about seeing his wife again. He would go along quietly.

This was his one last chance at an easy redemption, and he refused to do it. When faced with the ONE THING he always said he wanted, he turned away, because he’d never wanted it in the first place.

Granted, all of this serves as The Darkest Possible Mirror to the Winchester family, but I think it’s still useful to keep this in mind with what the 300th will be giving us next week. Sam and Dean have been struggling with what happened to their family, and how it resulted in their entire lives lived as a revenge quest and how the entire universe has demanded their involvement in cosmic affairs ever since. And now, they’re also looking for a bit of catharsis. And we have a dark mirror set up to shine an interesting light on that now...

Granted, it makes it really difficult to engage with Nick’s storyline, considering how little interest any of us have in him as a character, compounded by the fact that the character himself is entirely devoid of anything resembling something we can have sympathy for. And honestly, we never cared about him in the first place, and it just feels like beating a dead horse to keep dragging Mark P.’s face up on screen year after year just to demonstrate how irredeemable he is, but *heavy sigh* they do seem to be making the most of these facts despite that.

Honestly, they can do better. Pick a different character for us to spend a bit more time with. I’d love to see more Cas, and more Cas interacting with Sam and Dean individually, or more Mary, or more Jody and Donna and the girls, but this is what we have. So I’ll continue to wish they’d just put him out of our misery and off him once and for all, but sadly I think we’re stuck with him for at least the rest of the season...

There’s several ways I can personally think of that he could become more useful down the line, like the crack spec I wrote last week:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182454196470/solution-1-put-mike-into-nick-2-put-nick-in-the

but maybe a lil less... cracky... if they do something along those lines in canon...

Just how desperate is Nick to feel special again? To feel chosen? Would he take his second choice (Michael over Lucifer), and Dean’s sloppy seconds? How would that even work? What would they do? It may or may not be something in the future, but it’s one theory that’s giving me hope that he has some actual purpose to the narrative, since he’s proven himself absolutely irredeemable at this point. The only way he’s gonna earn redemption at this point is via self-sacrifice. Not even Lucifer could pull that one off... I don’t really have high hopes for Nick...

[journeysintowebcomics]

Homestuck Epilogues - Epilogue

Surpriiiise, the liveblog for the Homestuck epilogues ends here, even though I have read only one half. Here, allow me to give you my thoughts and reasoning! After all, I did decide to liveblog for a reason. Let’s see, where to start...

So, allow me to give my general opinion about the epilogue.

I didn’t really enjoy it much. Honestly, in terms of liking Homestuck, it drags my opinion down a little further. It’s rather unusual, though...the epilogues are well written, they’re interesting to read, and the situations aren’t dull at all. The characters go through a lot of situations and the emotions are so raw you feel them. By all means it sounds like they would be quite the masterpiece, no?

After thinking it, I came to the conclusion that the reason why I didn’t enjoy the epilogue despite how good it was is because it didn’t feel like something that’d be part of Homestuck.

Throughout most of it I had this insistent sensation of reading something that’s slightly off. The conclusion I have reached is that this epilogue feels like the author (or authors, because turns out there’s more than one. That was mentioned in the prologue I failed to read, haha) thought of situations and roles and then tried to make the character fit them, instead of making the situations fit the characters. Nothing wrong with assigning roles to characters, of course! The problem is when you have to force the characters in to the point where it feels like something’s wrong.

I figure part of the reason why things feel off is because there were several authors, too. I don’t know if only one handled each character or what, but it does explain a character may be handled differently than how the original author would.

Something else that kind of makes the epilogues not work likely is that, well, it kind of feels the authors didn’t...really seem to notice just how bleak things were? Like, once again, even at its bleakest Homestuck had this sliver of hope that showed that things would be fine. I don’t mean everything has to be okay for the characters or anything like that, what I mean is that a story shouldn’t feel like the author or authors are writing something for the sake of crushing the characters until they’re mincemeat. Hussie was pretty good in not letting Homestuck feel like it was misfortune for the sake of misfortune, even when things were definitely grim.

Here, I’ll give a couple examples: Terezi, through some clever directions, got John killed by the denizens, Jade is missing and most likely dead because she couldn’t enter the session, and Dave and Rose are trapped in a session that can go nowhere. That by all means is a pretty bad situation, no? In a way it’s similar to how in the meat epilogue John is dead, Jade is unlikely to get back to normal, Rose is kidnapped, and Dave is the only one who can do something about it. So what’s the difference?

The difference is that, in the first situation, it doesn’t feel like the characters have hit a brick wall in their lives.

I believe it’s partly because it was the end of Homestuck, pretty much. Nothing else will come after this – maybe? Possibly? Hah, who knows. But that’s not the only reason, though. Even though John and Jade had died, everything indicated Rose and Dave could do something about it. Likewise, Dave would be instrumental on doing that, and although Rose was the only one who was kind of screwed, it felt she had agency and helped set things right. Now, compare that to the situation in the meat epilogue.

John is dead and it’s pretty unlikely he can be revived, given how it’s said it’s ‘theoretically possible’, which is far from a guarantee, so he’s as good as gone. Rose by now may be inside a robot, and given her situation and affliction, it’s rather unlikely she can be transferred back into her body, so she’ll have to cope with being in a metallic tin forever, and that’s supposing whatever Dirk did to her brain can be undone when he dies. Jade likely will have to stay possessed by Dead Calliope in order to ensure nobody else can take over the narrative. Dave is the only one who is kind of okay, really. Do you see the difference?

I’m not asking for there to be a clear way for the characters to get out of their problems, or for nothing bad to happen to them. It just is that, well, everything they went through seems to have been carefully engineered to leave them for the worse.

Pretty much all the characters had some sort of disgrace in the meat epilogue. I already mentioned the Wonderkids’ fates, so I won’t repeat them. Jane won the presidency and now is cheerfully descending the slippery slope towards turning into a human version of the Condesce. Jake is pretty much a slave to Jane, not taken seriously by anyone, and it’s implied he’ll be kind of a sexual slave to her whenever she wants one. Dirk is the villain and has doomed himself to dying by Dave’s hands, all while deluding himself about how this was the only way to do whatever he’s doing. Kanaya got her wife kidnapped and things likely won’t be the same due to the changes on Rose. Terezi is incredibly depressed and carrying John’s corpse in a wallet. Calliope is traumatized, locked in a room, and doing nothing but painting on the walls.

Out of everyone, Roxy and Karkaroni are pretty much the only ones who didn’t end worse than when they started.

So, now that I addressed the complaint I had about the meat epilogue, allow me to talk about the good things this epilogue had.

Honestly, leaving aside what I mentioned about characters and about how off it all felt, I definitely think it was pretty well-written. Other than the strangely descriptive meat-eating, the use of the wording is effective. Also, the situations were interesting and it made me want to read more, and if this weren’t the end of the story, I’d want to find out more. The many smaller plotlines were handled well, and it didn’t feel like any character other than the Calliope who is alive got pushed aside for convenience. Rarely a story can handle a large number of characters without making a few be so prominent they make everyone else look like background filling instead of characters in their own right, but here they managed to make almost all characters matter in the story.

The ending was satisfying in some manner even though it was an open ending. It felt rather appropriate and I loved it, honestly. The adventure goes on! And the way the story closed with that bizarre postscript made clear no more can be expected to be written about these characters. In terms of ending, I found it rather nice. Open-ended but not too open-ended, unlike Act 7. I think the difference between these two endings is that the epilogue didn’t have something hyped up for three thousand pages, unlike Homestuck with the Lord English fight. The meat epilogue ending left open threads but none of them was the elephant in the room, so to say. Do you understand what I’m saying? Everything the epilogue was about was solved in some manner – the fight with Lord English, the president of earth elections, and Dirk’s takeover of the narrative – so all that was left open in the end was the characters facing something new, even if it was a consequence of the plotlines of the meat epilogue.  That’s the way an open ending should be like, I say.

Overall I think if this was a standalone story with its own characters, world and logic, it’d be a pretty damn good short story and I’d have loved it to bits. I said it before and I say it again: the downfall of this epilogue is that the Homestuck characters don’t fit well the roles they have here.

So, now what?

I thiiiink I won’t liveblog the Candy liveblog. Based on what I have already read on it, it doesn’t seem like my general opinions would change much. The situations are shaping up to be different than the ones in the meat epilogue, but I keep having that persistent feeling everything’s off. I have decided in my own time I will read the candy epilogue and the prologue I didn’t see until I was told it existed, but I won’t liveblog my opinions. Is it deceitful of me to stop the liveblog here? Maybe. But in the end, well, that’s how I think I will maximize my enjoyment of what’s left of the epilogues, so it’s for the best.

So, this is the final update for Homestuck, most likely. I like the thought of considering the meat epilogue the canon ending for Homestuck due to the sense of finality it has. Not the brightest ending ever, but it’s an ending that feels more...ending-y than Act 7, I’d say. So yeah! I’m glad I chose to read these epilogues despite the myriad of negative opinions I heard both from messages I received in my inbox and from friends.

Thank you very much for reading these few updates! From the next update on this website onwards, we’ll return to our regular programming.

[jayfromriverside-blog]

Comics I read this week (8/26 - 8/30)

Hey anyone and... anyone I guess. For all those looking to get into comics or who are already comics readers but don’t know which books are good, here’s an opinion on just that! 

Give it a read, let me know what you think, light some pitchforks, whatever you like:

Justice League #30

I was conflicted reading this week’s issue of Justice League: while I’m really liking the direction that Scott Snyder is taking the story, I’m really getting sick of Jorge Jimenez’s art on the series. 

While Jimenez was a breath of fresh air on the “Superman: Rebirth” series with his CG texturized drawing and smooth surfaces, his ultra-stylized and cartoony figures are starting to look more plastic and stretchy as this series goes on. He’s got a bad habit of smoothing over his character’s proportions, which make these heroes that are supposed to be cut and strong look flat and almost doughy. It’s starting to grind on me more as each new issue comes out, and maybe it’s time for an artistic switch-up on this title.

In terms of the story though, this was a good set-up issue for the Justice/Doom war that Snyder and co. have been building up to on this run. We’ve got all the pieces in place: a gathering of forces by both sides; a romp through time which sees the League meeting with both Kamandi and the classic JSA; and everything going awry right from the get-go! 

The only thing I’m slightly concerned about storywise is that Catwoman was in the Doom lineup, and with the rekindling of Bat-Cat in the latest Batman issues, I’m hoping this isn’t a portend for another breakup in King’s run. My heart couldn’t take another.

Superman #14

Let me be clear on one thing before I start in: I’m a fan of Brian Michael Bendis. His work on “Ultimate Spider-Man,” “Daredevil,” and “Alias” are some of my favorite comics, and his more recent work with “Naomi,” and “Event Leviathan” has been really good. With all that being said... man, this Superman comic has sucked hard since he took over.

Let’s just start at the story: 

It’s felt like Bendis has been really looking forward to getting started on his upcoming run with the new “Legion of Superheros,” which is something to potentially get excited about for the near future. What’s not exciting at all is the realization that this whole Rogol Zar arc has been a poorly thought out lead-in to the Legion’s return. SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO READ THIS GARBAGE FIRE: the Legion show up at the end of the issue to invite Jon to join, as a commemoration of the day the United Planets was formed. This is fine, and could be an exciting new direction for Jon that harkens back to the classic comics. BUT did we really have to suffer through weeks of nonsensical story just to get this? 

Just to recap this arc: Rogol Zar appears out of nowhere, looking like Lobo, Doomsday and a garbage disposal with a bland imagination all had an orgy and he was the deformed kid that came out of it. This beefed-up piece of blandness comes out of the sky to fuck up Superman cause he heard there were some Kryptonians still alive in the Universe and apparently he’s a space-racist. 

Superman struggles against this remnant from the 90s while the worlds shittiest not-dead Grandpa, Jor El, is off in space traumatizing Jon and stressing him out so much he ages up to a teenager. 

But it’s ok guys! Jor El knows who Rogol Zar is, they have a connection of sorts! And Rogol Zar caused the destruction of Krypton! But now he’s allied with Jax Ur, and also now Zod maybe? And the Thanagarians are involved? So are the Guardians? Wait, now Rogol Zar is also effected by Kryptonite because he’s a Kryptonian? And now he’s just captured like that, but Thanagar’s under attack, oh wait just kidding it’s not? 

Those last 2 plot points literally happened in 3 pages this issue, right after each other. So this story is confusing and non-sensical and ultimately doesn’t mean anything, because the whole point turned out to be that Bendis needed something, some plot device to make it so Superman could say “we can’t have secrets like this tearing apart worlds like Krypton, we need a United Planets.”

None of this crap story is helped by Ivan Reis’ art, which I know some people love, but to me it looks like everything bad with the 90s except with better backgrounds and textures. But even if I didn’t hate his art, his page and panel composition is often confusing, especially during fight sequences, which doesn’t help when the story is confusing to begin with.

After reading this week’s issue, I want nothing more than to die in the garbage fire Bendis has lit and take this whole comic with me. 

The Terrifics #19

Shouts out to DC for finally figuring out how to write a Fantastic 4 comic, maybe they can show Dan Slott how it’s done. But seriously, “The Terrifics” has been the exact kind of science-adventure story that needs to be around in comics, as the landscape needs it’s fare share of science-criminals and heroes to balance things out.

First thing to note for this week, the art is great. Max Raynor (first time I’ve seen their work) has a great kind of cartoony playfulness to his characters and line-work, while at the same time keeping the models tight and well detailed. 

I’m glad that the writers of the story realized that the Terrifics function best when they’re dealing with light-hearted cross-dimensional adventures, and this new one seems like it’ll be great from the start. In keeping with the “Year of the Villain,” Lex Luthor has made an offer to Bizarro (the one for the HTREA, not the one from the Outlaws), giving him a time-machine device to reek some havoc with. 

I don’t want to spoil the issue too much, as if you haven’t read the Terrifics you really should give it a go, but let’s just say that it involves Bizarro at one point destroying Algebra, and a Bizarro Terrifics team known as “The Terribles” breaking through to the main DC dimension to challenge their Terrific rivals.

If you’re looking for something fun, cheesy, but heartwarming and action packed, definitely give the Terrifics a try.

The Flash #77

Look, I’m still not digging this whole “Force War,” or “War of the Forces,” or whatever the Flash team is trying to build up with these new force users. It felt like the DC Creative team was trying to retcon Flash to be more mythical with “Flash: Year One,” pitting the Flash against the Turtle and creating this whole mythology around the Forces of the Universe to make it seem like this clash was inevitable. 

But what this has done for me is just make the Flash feel smaller and less special. These forces and the grander narrative behind them have just diminished the Speed force, which was still shrouded in some mystery after all these years in the DC Universe, to just one force, just A force. 

There are two silver linings from this week’s issue, one more bittersweet than the other. First off, the art has gotten ten times better than it’s been in weeks. Rafa Sandoval’s pencils are crisp and clean, and though his action feels static sometimes, he’s miles better than what we’ve been seeing for a few months now.

Second, though this Force War already feels like a dud, a cool concept was introduced in a throwaway line. Flash fans, feel free to crucify me, but with the Black Flash’s appearance this week, Commander Cold talked about how he was acting like an anti-body for the Speed Force in trying to eliminate these new force users. If that’s true, it makes the Speed Force almost like a living creature that feel’s like it is under attack. But this also makes me think that, wouldn’t it have been cooler if you had the same motivation for the appearance of the Black Flash, but instead of the Force users, it was Speedsters it was targeting? 

What if all of the new Speedsters were putting a strain on the Speed Force, hurting it in some way that awoke the Black Flash? It’d still give Barry a reason to reconcile with Wallace and Avery, but would also replace this Force War with a Speed War? Spitballing here, but that sounds cooler to me.

Ice Cream Man #14

And now we break up the superheroes for something a little more horrific. For anyone who doesn’t know what “Ice Cream Man” is, the best way I can categorize it is a horror anthology series. 

The story, setting and characters change from week-to-week, except for one presence: the Ice Cream Man. Even when he’s not in whatever nightmare is being doled out that week, his fingers can be felt all over the story, and they dig into the fears you try to hide and pry them open.

The theme of this week’s story was communication, and maaaaaaaaan does this comic have a way of making you feel depressed and scared all at the same time. 

The two main characters are a husband and wife, the former who is deeply dissatisfied and finds escape in crosswords, the latter who is so starved for communication and intimacy that she makes problems out of nothing just to have something to talk with her husband about. 

I don’t want to spoil too much, as I think everyone should be reading this book, but things take a turn for the hellish when the husband goes out to buy more crosswords and finds himself trapped in one, while his wife finds out that her delusions may have been true, and worse than she thought. 

For long-time readers, the biggest thing from to take away from this issue is that perhaps the Ice Cream Man’s influence is spilling out into the world more and more, and things will only get worse from here. 

Spider-Man: Life Story #6

For any fans of Spider-Man, go out and buy this book. Doesn’t matter if you’re a new fan or a hardcore fan, this is a story for anyone who has any love for Spider-Man in any shape. This story isn’t perfect all the way through, but man is it an incredible ride.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of this comic, writer Chip Zdarsky took the gargantuan task of creating one long-form story out of the entire continuity of Spider-Man, from the 1962 till 2019, and showing how this life that we’ve seen Spider-Man live would actually play out in real-time. 

This comic took some of the best and worst arcs, from “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” the birth of Venom and “The Superior Spider-Man,” to “The Clone Saga” and the Inheritors (god those pseudo vampires were dumb), and not only makes them work within this different world that Zdarsky has made, but makes them work as a part of the larger narrative. 

While it’s not perfect all the way through, seeing the characters we know and love, especially Peter and MJ, live their lives with wrinkles and all feels like something special, and I encourage anyone who is curious to go out and cop this 6 issue series and join the ride.

Runaways #24

For all manga fans out there, I’m a huge fan of the “slice-of-life” genre. For any non-manga fans, slice-of-life stories are ones that celebrate the everyday little moments that make up most of our lives. Riding bikes with friends, going to the movies, starting a new hobby, or even just going to the store and deciding what to get for dinner, these are all the kind of topics that a slice-of-life narrative covers. With her run on “Runaways,” Rainbow Rowell has essentially made a superhero slice-of-life comic, and I’m really liking every moment of it. 

This week’s issue focuses almost entirely on Karolina and Nico spending a night out “superheroing.” Except it becomes apparent pretty early on that neither really knows what they’re doing, and whatever little problems they run into (fender bender on the 405, potentially lost children, etc.) are better left to themselves, as they either wouldn’t be able to help or would actually get in the way. It’s weird to say that watching superheroes be ineffective is really entertaining, but that’s exactly what I’m saying, and I think that is in large part to the good character writing that Rowell has done on her run, and the warm art of this series that helps you feel safe and cozy.

My favorite part of the issue is when Karolina and Nico stop for a bite to eat, and Karolina feels like she has to apologize for wasting Nico’s time. Nico just laughs it off and tells her that she was just looking to spend time with her partner, so in her eyes tonight’s mission was a success. It’s cute, it fits with the characters and how we’ve seen them grow over the run, and I like it a lot. 

That’s not to say there isn’t any action in this issue. By the time the story is done there’s a super-powered dance fight and a mysterious new superhero debuting on the scene. I’m excited to see where both of those threads go heading into the next issue.

Justice League Dark #14

Since the Rebirth of this team this has been one of the comics that I look forward to the most each new issue, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite iterations of the team. While Batman’s gothic-detective aesthetic fit well with the team, he always felt too based in technology and the modern world to really embrace magic. On the other hand, Wonder Woman is a walking myth, a demi-god on earth, someone who is made of magic. Her role as the leader of this team alongside heavy hitters like Zatanna and Swamp Thing, along with smaller characters like Detective Chimp and Man-Bat, has felt natural and authentic.

Another great part of having Diana on the team rather than Batman is that her personality stands out. Whereas Batman and most of the magical characters in DC are generally tragic, Wonder Woman is a symbol of hope and optimism, someone who fights to see the best in people and bring that best version out of them. This works especially well with her band of misfits, who despite having much more experience than Wonder Woman in the world of magic, have far less experience in being part of a team, let alone in being “superheroes” in the traditional sense of the word. 

As for this issue, it’s a set-up chapter that ticks all the right boxes. We’ve essentially got the “Dark” Justice League Dark coming together, led by a newly powered up Circe, who are raring up to wage a Witching War against their good counterparts. While their final players are coming into the fold, the villains have already managed to plant a couple of seeds of doubt into the team which will certainly bloom into dissension. Can’t wait to see where this goes next.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #11

Tom Taylor gets Spider-Man. 

It’s a simple statement, but as we’ve seen over all of the years with Spidey, not a whole lot of writers have really understood what makes Spider-Man so spectacular, amazing, superior, etc. It’s a testament to how well Tom Taylor is writing Spider-Man in this series that he’s telling small scale stories without a whole lot of action, death-defying adventure or real conflict, and yet this is some of the best Spider-Man I’ve read in years. 

The opening pages set the tone for the story right away, with one of the simpler but most honest statements I’ve seen in a Spider-Man book:

“See, Captain America is Captain America. Thor is Thor. But Spider-Man...

Spider-Man is Peter Parker...

And Peter Parker is my responsibility.”

That’s the thesis statement for this story, detailing a day in the life of Mary-Jane Watson, the often under appreciated girlfriend of our titular web-head. 

The story from then on is pretty much in her hands, with occasional monologuing from a sleeping Peter, as Mary-Jane goes about what we can only assume is a pretty typical day in the life of the girlfriend of one of NYC’s premier heroes.

Small scale stories are essential in superhero comics in order to break up long events and arcs. They’re breathing room, time for the readers to catch their breath and assess the new status quo before things get wild again. But they’re also often the stories which show us the foundations of who these heroes really are. It’s been said that power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals, and when characters with as much power as Spider-Man aren’t up against the wall and forced to make a decision, the decisions they do make show us that much more about the person beneath the mask. 

Tom Taylor has managed to show us just who Spider-Man and the people in his life really are underneath their masks by lowering the stakes. The stories are small and simple, the consequences often equally so, but what’s been created is true to the characters more than almost any stories I’ve seen before, and it’s lovely. This is one of the best books being written right now, and if you’re not reading it yet, you need to go out and fix that right now.

Detective Comics #1010

It feels like there isn’t much to say about this week’s issue. We’ve still got the stranded billionares on the island, who are now clearly being held hostage by Deadshot. Meanwhile Bruce is rescued and patched up by two WWII fighter pilots who have been stranded on this island since the war, neither knowing which side won.

I’m a big fan of Deadshot when he leans into his nihilistic killer persona, and this “The Most Dangerous Game” setup with a tech-deprived Bruce and Deadshot duking it out on an island seems interesting. Tomasi has been generally pretty good with his run on Detective Comics, so I’m excited to see how long he runs with this arc of Bruce and Deadshot trying to outsmart each other in this deadly game of cat and mouse.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

The City of the Old Emperors: Thoughts on Openbound

DJay’s post reminded me that I have a lot of vague thoughts about Openbound, which I’ve never managed to organize into a coherent essay. In part, I was waiting for DJay to share his idea of Openbound as a kind of katabasis (journey to the underworld), which is central to a lot of my thinking these days. Now that that idea’s arrived, let me talk about some of my own.

Spoilers, as with all the best Homestuck analysis, for the book version of The Neverending Story.

1.

So. I’m very much in agreement with DJay’s big thesis that the shallow, annoying personas the Dancestors hide in are a ruse - a distaction, if you will. The dancestors present themselves as annoying, one-note characters, but they actually have a lot of history and pretty complex psychology if you look a little further - it’s just that at *this* point, after a billion years of living out their memories they’ve retreated into simplistic roles that they can safely play without engaging any more deeply with their past. Terezi and Karkat even acknowledge this, calling them caricatures. I love DJay’s term - “shades.”

I think where this really clicked for me was in in-story Hussie’s comment on Latula. He claims there’s nothing more to her other than being a cool rad gamegrl radgirl coolgirl.

This is obvious bullshit. Talking to her as Porrim reveals that Latula puts on the gamegirl persona as a way of dealing with other people, and she’s actually kind of relieved to be able to drop the act and acknowledge her problems. Relatedly, talking to Kankri as her reveals that she’s dealing with the problem of him awkardly hitting on her, which is one reason she retreats into a Gamegrl persona around him.

This is true for basically all of the characters introduced in Openbound. In-story, Kurloz is dismissed as a ridiculous mime when he’s helping Gamzee orchestrate LE’s rise and suppressing the agency of his friends (oh hey, Gamzee does this too, putting on the persona of “lolrandom incomprehensible prankster”); Cronus is indeed terrible, but terrible in a “what could have been kind of way” where he once had the chance to be a Harry Potter-esque hero; Mituna babbles and insults but only because he burnt his brain out making a great heroic sacrifice, Damara distracts the pretty significant statements she’s making about LE with vulgarity, Rufioh is pretty insecure beneath being Rufioh ...the list goes on.

So Hussie, in his in-story persona, is a god damn liar, and this is key to everything to that comes next.

The funny thing is, you don’t get the real stories from Hussie. You get it from talking to Aranea, which is framed as an act of “indulging” her, and by extension the author...but it’s only this “background” information which gives these characters complex lives and motivations beyond their personas. The effect it has is not of indulgence - the effect is to frame the whole dancestor ballet as a non-indulgence, revealing them as deeper than they seem.

(At this point, though, many readers will already be sick of them, and miss what’s really going on.)

Porrim would seem to be the one exception. In her case, though, I think it’s not so much that the reader doesn’t recognize her complexity as a person, but that her friends don’t. They stereotype her as being all about sex and relationship when her sex positivity is actually part of a larger goal of honestly examining her society. She’s the only one who can see the personas for what they are, since she recognizes it as something put on her from the outside.

2.

The theme of a voyage to the underworld (katabasis) can be analyzed a number of different ways, and all of them fit Homestuck. As an epic, Homestuck of course has an obligation to go to the land of the dead halfway through its story, so that the protagonist can learn something they need to know.

If there’s anything we’re learning these days, though, the protagonist of the epic Homestuck isn’t a character,  it’s the MSPA reader. It’s us who make the journey to Homestuck’s underworld. Meenah plays the role of hero there, with Aranea her guide, but we know that we move through which characters we control, each of them being temporary analogues for our will. We are the ones who descend into its hell.

(And now I think we’re finally figuring out what we’re supposed to learn there.)

Just as DJay says, the fact that these characters are reduced to stereotyped shades is all Lord English’s fault. Literally, they’ve been hollowed-out by millions of years of being trapped in their memories, thanks to his machinations ruining their lives, and now face his threat again in the afterlife. Metafictionally, we’ve been asked *not* to care about them by the narrative, in the same way Caliborn demands that we don’t give a shit about Homestuck. That’s LE’s great power over the narrative: the threat of apathy.

3.

I tend to think of Life, in Homestuck’s platonic-narrative symbolic system, as representing positive character growth, and by extension things that readers experience as positive development. It’s interesting, then, that the one who brings these dead souls back to life is Meenah, a Life player. It’s even more interesting in that it’s Meenah who deprived them of their lives in the first place. Thinking to escape a dead session for the afterlife, the Thief of Life robbed them of their literal lives, but she also robbed them of their chance to grow as a people. They are thus echoes and victims of LE’s nature as a being that cannot grow or change, and is doomed because of it. But also, it’s kind of Meenah’s fault. Her frustration with them echoes her own choices.

(Worth noting, though, that Tavros is able to persuade them to take part in the final fight against him! It’s subtle, but a little burst of Life at the last moment.)

4.

Openbound is full of good parallels to katabasis mythology. The dream-bubble afterlife echoes both Greek Hades and Christian hell. Homestuck’s dancestors are a lot like the shades Odysseus and Aeneas encounter: they’re faded ghosts, “shades,” who can’t speak until the hero gives them blood to restore their intelligence for a brief time. In Homestuck, what we - and Meenah - give them is a brief window of attention. But it won’t last, and it won’t restore them to life. But it’s also Dante’s Hell. Dante sees souls undergoing ironic punishments, trapped by their own greed, avarice, and lust. The limitation of their will is what keeps them in hell.

There’s one more descent story which I think is very instructive here, though.

And that would be the City of the Old Emperors from Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, a tale which has quite a bit of relevance for Homestuck.

5.

The first half of The Neverending Story featured the protagonist Bastian being called into the pages of the book and the world of Fantastica, explicitly stated to be a realm made of humanity’s ideas, to recreate this world anew. In the second half of the book, he does so. Unfortunately, as he becomes more sure of his world-creating power, Bastian loses the memory of his own humanity, and begins to forget that Fantastica is not merely his plaything. Declaring himself Emperor, he tries to pretend he created it all, when really he was only acting through the power of another, The Childlike Empress. Bastian soon undergoes a spectacular fall at the hands of his previous allies and friends.Only then can he wake from his reverie and find the last wish he needs to achieve redemption.

But for that redemption to happen, he needs to go into a kind of underworld himself, to learn what mistake it was that he was making.

After being defeated by his friends, Bastian stumbles into a strange city. His horse disappears under him, and he falls - down, down into a crater, where there is a city of strange buildings, full of people in strange clothes doing bizarre things. Before long, he finds a monkey-like guide named Argax, who calls the place the City of the Old Emperors. These strange figures, Argax informs him, were all people from the human world who declared themselves Emperors as Bastian did, and this is the sad result.

“How did they get here? What are they doing here?”

“Oh, there have always been humans who couldn’t find their way back to their world,” Argax explained. “First they didn’t want to, and now, in a manner of speaking, they can’t.[...]”

“Why can’t they?” he asked.

“They’d have to wish it. And they’ve stopped wishing. They used up their last wish for something else.”

“Their last wish?” said Bastian, going deathly pale. “Can’t a person go on wishing as long as he pleases?”

“[...]No! No!” he chattered. “You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can’t have a future. That’s why they don’t get older. Just look at them. Would you believe that some of them have been here a thousand years and more? But they stay just as they are. Nothing can change for them, because they themselves can’t change anymore.”

- The Neverending Story, Chapter 23, pg 378-379

Bastian learns that all these people used up their wishes, leaving them unable to understand or interact with the world. Imagination eludes them - they can only tell stories by randomly forming words from jumbles of letters. Because they didn’t understand where their wishes were coming from, they were left without the capacity for wishes altogether

Another way of saying this is that they were left without will. They have no will to impact the world, because they turned away from the world altogether, retreating into a false idea of themselves. A persona, and not a person who could grow.

This is exactly the position we find the dancestors in in Homestuck. In both Homestuck and the Neverending Story, the limitations of one’s own will are the limitations of one’s agency to influence reality, and the Beforans have given up their will. Theirs is the same mistake as Bastian’s, as Caliborns, and it leaves them hollowed-out, unpleasant, shallow people.

It is their ideas about their will that failed them.

From his encounter with the Old Emperors, Bastian learns the truth about his wishes, enabling him to make his last few wishes count, and bringing him to where he needs to be to find the Waters of Life and make his final wish a wish for his own capacity to love.

So what do we need to learn from the Beforans?

Like us, Bastian is at once both a reader and the protagonist of the story. Michael Ende uses Bastian’s experience to argue that readers have a responsibility to the stories they read and tell. We must give them dignity by breathing life into them, rather than read them in self-indulgent, shallow ways, and we must be willing to grow as we read them.

Homestuck suggests much the same thing. Just as Bastian needed to descend to the hell of the Old Emperors to understand his mistake, we need to descend to the hell of the Dancestors to understand the final confrontation with Caliborn. Like them, we are offered a choice. We are shown his limited view of the world - a view that reduces Homestuck to shallow jokes. We must decide whether we will become him - or set ourselves free.

And to set them free, from the hell they’ve made for themselves, we must also, difficult as it is, believe that the Dancestors can change, more than they can believe it themselves.

In presenting us with their ballet, Hussie challenges us with his favorite question: are we going to accept the surface level,  that Homestuck is just a bad joke full of meaningless flat characters?

Or are we going to take up his challenge to look a little deeper, to breathe life into them and believe there’s more going on beneath the surface - even, no, especially when it’s hardest to do so?

The dark hell of Openbound is the other side of the triumph of Calliope’s Rapture. Homestuck’s fractal structure reflects itself many times over, again and again asking us what we make of it, because we can make of it what we will.

But what will we make of it?

Ah, that is our story, and will be told another time.

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Hey, just wanted to say first that your reviews are still awesome and I'm glad you put some humor into them. Now my questions for this week, I remember in one episode where Josie felt Lizzie's pain and knew she was in trouble. But during their sweet 16, Lizzie didn't know that Josie was in trouble. Do you think this is the writers saying Lizzie is a bad sister or was it a point they forgot about? Also, what do you think about the possible friendship between Hope and Lizzie?

Once again, thank you! I’m so glad you’re enjoying them. Thank you for enjoying my humor as well, I’m not super confident in my sense of humor, so it does warm my heart to know that people do enjoy the humor I interject in these reviews. And I do try to put in as much humor as I can, if I didn’t laugh at this show, I’m pretty sure I’d end up crying on account of the show being so terrible. I really do wish this show was funny intentionally, though. The plot sucks, most of the characters are carboard cut-outs, the least the show can do is make me laugh genuinely, you know? If it managed to do that, I might’ve been able to cut it a little more slack and while still calling the show absolute trash, I could at least also call it funny trash that I don’t mind watching. But sadly, the only thing JP has for humor are really cringey pop culture references.

Alright, with these writers’ track record, it could legitimately be either or. Plot holes and inconsistencies are nothing new when it comes to TVD universe. It could very well mean that the writers forgot about it and really will only use the “twin link” when it suits the narrative. But also, the writers have also been pretty consistent with trying to paint Lizzie as the “bad” sister and Josie the “good” sister. They really have not been super subtle about it.

But I do have somewhat of an idea on “twin links”. Twins run in my family. My aunts are identical twins and at a family reunion, I once asked them if it’s true if twins can feel the other when they’re in pain. And they told me it’s somewhat true. But it’s less about feeling each other’s pain and more so about having a sort of alarm bell going off in the back of your head. You know how sometimes you’re minding your own business but you’ll have that nagging thought in the back of your head telling you you forgot something but you can’t quite remember what it was? That’s how my aunts explained it. When the other is in pain, it’s this feeling they have in the back of their mind telling them something is wrong but they can’t quite determine what it is. Granted, as we are all individuals, it’s possible separate sets of twins experience this phenomena in different ways. Apart from how the writers may be interpreting the “twin link”, how I interpret the Salvatore-Forbes twins’ “twin link”, I think it’s a little different for both of them based on their personalities. I think Josie feels it more because of how dependent she is on Lizzie. She’s so dependent on Lizzie to the extent that so much of her own identity is attached to Lizzie. Lizzie is basically Josie’s center so if something’s off with Josie’s center, it’s going to resonate a lot with her, her very being is going to be thrown off-balance. And while Lizzie is certainly dependent on Josie as well, Lizzie has more of a sense of self that isn’t directly attached to Josie. So I do believe Lizzie feels the ‘twin link” as well, but more to the extent of what I described above with my aunts, it’s more of a feeling in the back of her head, she may feel that’s something’s off but she can’t quite place what it is. And since Lizzie, by her nature, is narcissistic and self-centered and she was at a party where she was basically the center of attention, she most likely just shook the feeling off. She was already being stimulated by all of these other things, she could’ve mistaken that feeling for anything. So me personally, I don’t think it’s because she’s a bad sister, we saw when she was trapped in that alternate universe, when she found out that her sister was dead in that universe, it destroyed her. Josie is also Lizzie’s center in a way, but it’s a little bit different. Josie is Lizzie’s center in the sense of her self-control. You can see in that same episode that whenever Lizzie felt like her bond with Josie was weakening, she was losing her ability to be in control of herself.

And being completely selfless for your siblings isn’t what necessarily makes you a “good” sibling. Me and my three brothers love each other but I’m sure we’d never want to sacrifice everything for each other. We’d never ask that of the others, either. We love each other and we want each other to be happy and just knowing that is all we need to feel like we’re “good” siblings. But how I interpret sibling relationships is very different from how these writers are interpreting sibling relationships. They may not be subtle about what they’re trying to do but I’ll be subtle on their behalf and add these little nuances to the characters since they’re so inept at it.

Honestly, I’m way more interested in a Hope and Lizzie friendship than I am in a Josie and Hope friendship. From what little we’ve seen, Josie and Hope just don’t have a whole lot of personality to the friendship but in the short snippet we got in the mummy episode, I saw sparks for a really interesting friendship between Lizzie and Hope. Even though I don’t necessarily like how Hope is all doom and gloom all the time, I do feel like Lizzie and Hope can benefit each other greatly. Their darknesses they hold within themselves are obviously very different and as I pointed out in that review, they really shouldn’t be compared to each other but I do believe they can help each other with that. Lizzie can help Hope with her sense of belonging. Lizzie does have a confidence about her that could enable Hope to learn how to involve herself more with the day-to-day activities of the real world, thus finally giving her a sense of belonging and inclusion and Hope might be someone who can help Lizzie in dealing with her darkness. One of the biggest issues Lizzie has is that she doesn’t really have anyone who understands what it’s like to not feel like they’re in complete control of their feelings and thus their magic, and I feel like Hope can be the person that can give her that understanding and also be the one to call Lizzie out on her destructive tendencies in a more constructive way than what we’ve gotten with Penelope. Hope can give Lizzie that understanding and help Lizzie to be better and Lizzie can also give Hope the same. Basically, they have the ability to understand each other in ways no one else at the school really can.

Thanks for the ask! Hopefully I made sense somewhere amidst all this rambling. And hopefully you continue to enjoy my commentary on Lega-Trash!

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 1923

Spoilers, obv.

Jamie said that for once, an issue of WicDiv will have more of my prose in it than are in the writers note. I joked that “We'll see about that” but I think I'm actually going to keep this one relatively tight. There is a lot of allusions and nods, and if I start doing the full Jess Nevins League Annotations, it's going to take forever, be over-explaining the joke and generally come across as a bad look.

The 1923 special was one of the logical pantheons to go back to, not least as the implicit floating question of “Who the hell were those four people at the start of issue one.” Not that alone made it happen – hell, maybe to the contrary. WicDiv is so big in historical implication that half the way it works is by implication. You choose a detail, and let the imagination populate around it. This nervous stand-off between saying too little and saying too much is very much a core balancing act.

I've had people ask what I knew about them back in issue one. The core, necessary stuff. The nature of what led to the suicide pact, the Gatsby-ish setting and the emotional underpinings between the four – Susanoo and Amaterasu's divine bro-sis complications, the history with Amon-Ra, the broad strokes of their personality, what movement in art they were representing, etc. But stuff changes, and lots of stuff added.

I forget where the core idea came from, but it was there and immediate and obvious in its “Oh yeah – that's clearly something that is intellectually and artistically valid, and also dumbly hilarious.” Which is very much the go-to WicDiv move. The way I described it to people was “Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but with a bunch of modernist figures getting bumped off. Theme of high art versus low art, the birth of the 20th century culture, the war, etc.”

Details added to that – the gods' suicide pact to try and avert WW2 – which started to lead to the gods we wanted to cast elsewhere. A number of figures who echo with the war interestingly – Orwell, Hemingway, Piccasso started to appear in there. There were figures I just knew I wanted – Woolf, etc.

The form came there – I had the idea of being a prose/comics hybrid early, but resisted it, because I knew it would be a lot of work. I say that not out of laziness, but out of simple possibility. In the end, I was right – there was no time to do this along my usual workload, and I ended up working over the Christmas holiday to write this. I had Christmas off, but otherwise, I was with the gods. Still – it was done quickly. As the lady says, “The deadlines were crushing”

The other options were to do in multiple issues. I found myself thinking that two issues may work – and that idea was before the Christmas Annual. That was rejected, as I was aware that while it wasn't laziness, it was to some degree cowardice. A prose/comics hybrid was the right idea to support the story. Commit.

So we did, and I started playing for time. There is a lot of research – obviously involving reading a bunch of the relevant figures, not least Christie to think of structure. I was picking my cast, and seeing how they fit together, and so on.

There was a problem. I still didn't have a plot. What were these gods doing?

At which point, on the suggestion of a reader on twitter, I read John Carey's The Intellectuals And the Masses and the scales fell from my eyes. Of course. I've been so blind.

The book is a gleeful, sustained and viscous intellectual evisceration of high Modernism. Much of it I already knew, but this specifically argued case made me realise the obvious: intellectually speaking, a bunch of them were fellow travellers with totalitarianism and had nothing but disgust for the common person. In other words, in WicDiv's universe, it made me realise I could step past my actual admiration for many of the figures in question and just follow those implications through.

And suddenly, there's the plot rather than the concept. In my head, I was thinking everyone would be very anti fascism. By realising some of them wouldn't necessarily be (or, at least, “Hey – it won't be that bad, and what really matters is art and the people who can actually appreciate art”.) I have multiple sides with multiple questions and a bunch of place to explore.

At which point, we needed our artist. Aud worked with Al on the Ultimates, which was my first extended exposure to her bar individual bits of art – we loved it, and thought she'd be perfect. We approached her, and she said yes.

At which point, the problems of scripting. I played with time to actually write the prose to get more and more research. The script I wrote her had the comic pages, but only included a synopsis of what happened in the prose bits, so Aud could follow the narrative. I'll include one of them later in this to give you an idea. The point being – the structure, and the primary clues (and red-herrings) were in existence at that point. I just had to execute them. I could put that off.

I did.

I ended up actually writing the prose two months after Aud got the script, so I had all her pages to look at while working. This obviously led to a lot of inspirational material back and forth. There's a few problems – some fun ideas I had in the process of writing aren't ever shown in the art, and some areas where I had to write around a problem. But some of those writing around a problem led to some of the more memorable bits in the story.

It was fine. This is a dense issue of WicDiv. I did the math, and I think in terms of material, you'd be pushed to do it in any less than 4 issues without compressing, and maybe even five. However, that was necessary to be what it was required to be. It was a dragon, and we killed it.

Here's a section from the opening letter to Aud, which basically speaks to the core intent...

The mood is basically an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery. This is pulp and light. It just happens to star riffs on some of the most intellectual writers of all time. As such, we kind of mock them. They're trapped in this kind of story – and this story kills them all.

At the same time, this is a story about form. What is comics? What is prose? Is illustrated prose just a comic with a really big caption? This is arguably the most modernist issue of WicDiv that we've ever done. As such, we're saying the exact opposite to the above as well – that we are the successors to these geniuses, and this is our ultimate tribute to them.

My tongue is in cheek with the above, but perhaps less than it should be.

I smile. There's a lot about this issue that makes me smile. And readers too – it went down in basically the most optimistic scenario it could have been. We knew that there would be some people who just rejected it due to the comics/prose hybrid form – and hell, I don't even necessarily think those people are wrong to do so. However, with a handful of exceptions – none of whom were reviewers – the only people who didn't like the issue were those who rejected it because of formal reasons.

I admit, this has led me to unpacking why people did, and some theories will come below. I also get the feeling this is an issue which I am at risk from taking the wrong lessons from.

Let's do this.

Jamie Cover: Minimalistic, clean, book cover. Instantly classy. Instantly foreshadowing That Fucking Lighthouse.

I notice the $4.99 price here. Yeah, we decided to sort of stack the odds in people liking the oddness. This is a lot of content for five dollars. If people like the way I think, you get your money's worth.

Aud's Cover: In giving Aud a brief, I wanted to do a scene which we likely weren't going to see inside. Plus the final cast hadn't been sorted out at this point, so we wanted to do something with the four figures from issue 1. As such, doing Amaterasu and Susanoo in a waltz among the living light dead struck us as fun. Aud wanted to integrate the title, which also works well. The doomed romance of the pair of them is certainly a key nature part, and felt good to foreshadow here.

Image Expo Cover: This was done far later than the other ones, and is so good we tried to work out if there was a way of switching it with the main cover. Alas, too late. This is inspired by Weimer Pursell's World Fair poster. Jamie is almost unrecognisable in style due to the lack of classical inking. I especially like this as it shows Lucifer on the cover, which obviously adds to the impact when we kill him.

IFC

The headshots were done last by Aud, after she done the rest – it was a “If we have time, it'd be good to do this too.” We played with some ideas for using them in different places (perhaps even as far as topping each bit of prose) but decided that was too much. That we go in deep with the prose at the start causes big problems. Oddly, my main take from reading Christie is how the opening of the books are the hardest parts – they're trying to set up so many characters, and I had a tendency (especially with my somewhat loose relationship with names) to lose which dude was which dude. That was always going to be a sticking point in this issue, so I felt a Dramatis Personnae to open would work as a visual anchor to the cast. “Dionysus? Who's Dionysus.” <Flips back> “Ah!”> and then back in.

Lovely design here by Sergio. I'll want to rave about Sergio throughout, but let's say it here loudly. This is amazing work.

Okay! The gods. Let's do what everyone's been asking for and saying who's influenced by who. Or at least, broadly.

Part of the reason why I wanted to do 1923 in prose was it would give the opportunity to have all 12 gods. The specials have gone down well, but there's been a regular undercurrent of “We want to know more about the others”. In 25 pages, that's not going to happen, at least in any way which is useful. We have to focus to some degree. In this case, for once, we wanted to give a full image of a full pantheon, just to show how it worked in another period – and with that, a readers' imagination can populate others with more guidance.

Secondary issue: while I've been describing the comic as “Modernist poets in an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery” that clearly wasn't true. We'd already shown four gods from 1923, so it clearly couldn't just be modernist poets. Of course, this is the theme – high art versus low art and the various different approaches to the gods is key.

Essentially, the 1923 pantheon is half way between the 1831 and 2013 pantheons in approach, with elements of both. As a mid-way point between the two, that seems to work. The gods that hark to the future have an approach more similar to the 2013 pantheon. The defeated gods have an approach which has a little more to the past. It's more complicated than that, and there's obvious exceptions, but that's what the backbone is.

So some gods are based on an archetypal sort of creator or artform, with a few nods to specific things, (Amon-Ra, Susanoo, Amaterasu, Minerva, Baal) while others are inspired an actual figure with a few grace notes from elsewhere (Neptune, Dionysus, Morrigan) and others are inspired by a creator merged with something from their fiction (Lucifer, Norns, Set). And then there's Woden, who isn't a god, so the rules change.

I swapped “based on” for “inspired” just now in the above. WicDiv may be inspired by figures, but the real figures also exist in the world of WicDiv. This gives us the narrative distance required to do what we do with them.

So, from the top, and in broad strokes. If you want more of the indirect influences and some theories, I think TWATD has the best round up.

Baal: One part of the conspiracy. Researching the period, there is a lot of white elitist dudes of various stripes, and Baal ends up being them all. In terms of actual references, there's a lot of TS Elliot in there, but there's strong notes of Ezra Pound and the big reference only a few people have spotted is Wyndham Lewis, who I think provides the majority of the look. I'm not sure Jamie was thinking of that explicitly, but he wanted to definitely have someone who looks like an elitist. Of all the older-gods, he's the broadest and most archetypal, and that's because there's a lot of this sort of guy, and it felt like repeating the same character multiple times. It's also a pretty white pantheon anyway.

Amaterasu: The concept of her in issue one was “all of Dramatic Film”. As such, she recalls a lot of early movie heroines. In terms of her powers, she recalls Georges Méliès in several places. I wasn't aware of The Four Troublesome Heads at the time of writing, but I really wish I was.

Lucifer: Fitzgerald meets Gatsby.

Susanoo: If Amaterasu is dramatic film, Susanoo is comedy. Biggest influence in terms of me thinking of how he moves is Buster Keaton, and for me, Susanoo's movement was the thing that was always on my mind.

The Morrigan: Primarily Joyce. Jamie using the later-period Joyce eyepatch is one of my favourite notes in all of this, but Aud just makes him sing as the bedraggled writer. He's a heartbreaker. He's notably the Modernist who is against the Modernists' elitists and topics, which is one of the beats to complicate things.(Random quote from Woolf on Joyce: “a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating.”)

Neptune: Hemingway, with a few random grace notes from Nemo. I smile at “Sea god. Short sentences.” I had far too much fun writing Hemingway parody – the active character with the active voice.

The Norns: Wells, Huxley and Orwell, with grace notes in Little Brother from all their books. The idea of a triple-god who are all Future was the core of it, and I yelped in excitement.

Set: Woolf meets Orlando (which basically means it's Woolf meets her literary love portrait of Vita Sackville-West). Her historical-anecdote-for-any-occasion twitch comes from Orlando done in the style of Baron Munchausen's loving hyper-parody, but I can't deny it does come off a little like Tahani from the Good Place. The Set from Bloomsbury is my favourite pun in the issue, not least because people either get it immediately or just miss it completely. The figure I'm least comfortable with throwing under the bus, but I've already written her as a hero figure in Uber, so it probably evens out. I also remember things like the quote from the Morrigan above, which as a self-taught nauseating working man, does tend to soothe things somewhat. Like the Baal, her position is less being pro fascism (and Set is distinctly less pro fascism than Baal) and more a complete lack of interest in anything which isn't art. It's definitely one when the “inspired by” distance is key.

Amon-Ra: Embodiment of Jazz and Blues – primarily blues – with a little of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the tiny nods are Robert Johnson ones.

Woden: Most of the visual language is are from German Expressionism (most obviously Fritz Lang) and the political beliefs (to state the obvious) Nazism. Like 2013 Woden, Woden isn't a god. He's a god who's killed someone and stolen their place and turned it to his own awful ends. When researching Uber, I found people like Hitler difficult to get on a human level. I've never known anyone like Hitler. Conversely, Joseph Goebbels? If you take the guy in his 20s propping up the the bar talking about how he's working on his novel and add virulent anti-semitism, then you basically have Goebbels. You can almost see him shiver in delight that he murdered his way into controlling art in his country... but there isn't a note of art in him. That's basically Woden. He's appropriated the art of a country at gunpoint. He looks like a villain, but even that look isn't his, and his villainy more profound. He would rule a people through sound and light. As Morrigan is the Modernist against Modernist's elitism, Woden is the Populist Against The People.

Minerva: Child-star archetype generally, Shirley Temple specifically. (I just typoed “Shirley Crabtree.” Now that is a very different look) In terms of personality though, I found myself falling into a slightly frenzied Enid Blighton Famous Five-ish voice.

Dionysus: Picasso as living Guernica. As good a place as any to mention the time-mashing in all of this – basically, the Spanish Civil War experience was moved from the thirties to WW1. That's the sort of editing we do with the figures. This is about (broadly speaking) “Between the wars and what that felt like, and giving birth to the 20th century.”

I lobbed a bunch of ideas at Jamie, and he did full body length plans for each. We'll probably include them in the trade when we get there.

Page 3-5

Right – 3000 words in and I haven't started the story yet. Things are going to be looser now – most  of the thinking is above.

The second two pages were originally written as a splash, but Aud wanted to do it widescreen. I originally WANTED it as a two-page splash, but I didn't have the space to spare, so this re-creating it pleased me. Obviously this sets out the visual location of the whole story – here we have the island, here we have a lighthouse, etc.

Aud suggested doing it in a limited palette form, with the ink washes, and we clearly loved it. When actually describing the sea in the text bits, I was trying to evoke these actual seas, which is a fun way to do interplay.

But yeah – it's our “Here's Ananke.” As I suspect many have noticed, the specials main connective tissues are Ananke and Lucifer. The backbone of the specials trade is the meetings of Anankes and Lucifers across the centuries.

The “This will have to be my masterpiece” is lots of fun. I suspect this is how Christie felt about And Then There Was None. It's interesting that in all the conversation around the issue I haven't seen anyone realise that Ananke is Christie – some kind of demonic Miss Marple figure, writing the plot. It's also the first red herring. Clearly we know Ananke is a murderer at this point, so she's always the logical suspect. The story is based around flirting with that, stepping away from that, then stepping back to it.

The title was decided late – literally when this page was being laid out. I felt it was a little too obvious, but decided it was just obvious enough. Layout minimalistic, clipped, recalling both books and film (especially of the period). It's the first of that sort of thing, and far from the last.

Page 5

We initially decided we didn't need the icon page. We didn't think we'd have space.

Then the do-a-splash-as--two-pages actually created some problems, in terms of leading to all the early death reveals to be on the right. We were in a position of either padding the first text section by a page (and when that was long, it felt bad) or strimming it (which is bad, in a different way). Then we did some math and realised if we had an interstitial here it would actually bring us to the exact 56 pages.

So Jamie did the icons and everything became perfect.

Here he picks up the Art Deco from issue 1, which is a delight. Much to love here – I think his personal favourite is Dionysus' icon, which is understandable, as that's just awesome. I'm glad we actually found space to do this – yes, part of the book was showing a complete pantheon... but a pantheon isn't really complete until you see their icons.

In other notes, I'm considering using these icons as shoulder transfers for my Space Marine chapter.

7-12

Chapter 1!

Here's the synopsis of what I wrote in Aud's drawing script...

This is basically a series of short chapters, ala the opening of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (but shorter), introducing the various parties making their way to the island. I suspect they will be three, who will be...

The first ship reaching the island – Dionysus, the Norns, Woden, Morrigan, Minerva, Neptune. Possibly two ships. We set up some key relationships here – at least, Morrigan and Minerva seem to be getting on.

The Awesome Egyptian-mode approach carrying the Egyptian gods. It belongs to Set. Baal tells Amon-Ra Set is getting reading ready, before Amon-Ra then teleports down to the island, having seen...

...Amaterasu/Susanoo's approach, setting up their own somewhat populist beliefs in art (and light) and their fear they may be in an incestuous relationship. Amon meets them.

(Regarding teleportation: the gods have their selection of appropriate abilities to their archetypes – it's perhaps worth noting that the “Good” gods in this story tend to be sun or light gods. In the 2014 pantheon, the underworld gods tend to be the “Good” ones.)

One of his servants – made of living light, projected from the house – tell them that the final gods are arriving now. “Give them five minutes, then send them down.” Alone, drinking, he muses on all he's done to build this place? Will she finally be impressed with him?  Someone arrives. He asks “Does this impress? “They smile, say it's perfect and for a second he's happy, before they click their fingers.

So there's the shape of it there, especially the key beats – it's enough for me to know there IS a solution.

This is the longest of the prose sections, and unavoidably so. The first movement of a Murder Mystery is to reveal the cast. It's also the longest section anyway – we start primarily in prose and we move towards primarily to comics. Prose is high art, old europe, etc and comics is low art, the new world, etc.

In terms of prose style, I weighed up what to do. I started thinking a pure Christie homage in actual prose, but backed away – it's a fun card trick to show, but I think it'd be less satisfying to the reader (who may or may not like Christie), and more easy to fuck up (So high risk for little reward). So structurally it was based on Christie, and instead the found a voice I found fun – a little period, but also a performance. And far too reference heavy for its own good. But Fun.

Fun is a key thing. The more I decided to be playful with the book, the better it seemed to work. As said, this is a key WicDiv stance. I haven't re-read it in detail (and I'm only skimming now) but I'm not too angry with what's here. That'll do.

The d____ was one of the Christie stylistic choices I chose to keep for period. It's fun.

Morrigan basically speaks in stream-of-consciousness parody throughout, including bits of Joycean scripts. Part of me was tempted to do the ““MORRIGAN: (softly). Aye.” said Morrigan, softly.” joke throughout. I can imagine Neptune wanting to punch him for the adjectives, evidently.

Hmm. Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking “I really don't need to say much about the prose sections.”

Page 13-14

The structure is key visual and plot relevant scenes are played out in comics. The stuff you need to see and we want to show you.  Plus, abstractly, I suspect someone could just read the comic pages and get the core of the story.

(The things are prose are also things which are inefficient in comics – drawing room discussions are rarely riveting visual prose, and nightmarishly tricky to do with a large cast. Not that it's impossible – see THE WATCH chapter in Imperial Phase)

I like Ananke's complicity-inducing glance-to-read in the fourth panel of thirteen.

I do like the Butler.

And the reveal! These splashes were considered a bunch – my original idea was actually to have them in a frame, to REALLY AGGRESSIVELY make them works of art, and turn it into a gallery wall. In the end, the distance from reader seemed too much, and we went a way which took a lot of it in (as in, we're still looking at an image, the caption is designed to evoke a plaque in an exhibit, the caption of the prose also a framing in art) but just let Aud be Aud and blow people away.

So much here  - First appearance of a non-sepia cover. I wish I did something with that apple too, for the full Lucifer-in-Paradise.

Page 15-18

Chapter 2!

The Metropolitan are definitely the great-lost-visual from the issue. Clearly, the robot from Metropolis as a servant.

Honestly, getting the cast to go at each other here is fun, in the dual conversation of what they're talking about (the murders) and what they're really talking about (Art). Also, they're mostly funny – some I like more than others, but when doing the prose, I rapidly found how much I enjoyed doing these affectionate mockeries.

Skimming through this, I'm considering who the lead actually is. In some ways, obviously, it doesn't have one – in my head, the Norns are the lead, and Verondi, specifically, but I suspect Susanoo is the moral and human backbone of it. People seem to like him too: everyone loves a sad clown.

19-20

See – this is where the “comic pages alone are still readable.” As in, we specifically show the core clues you need to know in the comics. There's other clues in the prose, and there's certainly red herrings in the comic (Ananke's sinister nature is played up).

I really like how Aud does the Butler here, which is good, considering it's the last we see of him – that fade in between the second and third panel.

Yes, page 20 is probably the most PAINFUL pun in the issue.

21-24

Chapter 3!

Man, the small change which nags at me most which I may change for the trade is Woden saying “We're not too different. Perhaps... two-thirds different.” Clearly, it should be one-third different.

The word “posset” is my tribute to The Box Of Delights, which is a traditional Xmas watching in my house.

25-26

And the last two pager – prose firmly dominating as the old world dominates the plot, to state the obvious.

Oddly tricky first panel to letter – I kept on trying to get a BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU joke into it, but it always felt clunky. Or rather, clunkier than normal.

The red seaweed is a lovely touch for Neptune.

27-28

Pace-pace-pace. Neptune not being able to swim is, I suspect, my favourite character beat. Masculinity is one hell of a drug.

This whole sequence I imagined Ananke as a passive-aggressive Sherlock Holmes pretending to be Watson.

29-33

And Set giving serious pose at the end of 29. Well done, Set. You've risen to this occasion.

Quiet tension leading to violence. Honestly, I really like the My Chemical Romance vibe to the Norns – Verondi is very much the star here.

First appearance of the full on screen interstitial card – obviously saving the full explanation until later, nearer the climax, but the edging into comics formalism aping period cinema necessity.

I think the most chilling of the death scenes is this one.

34-35

Chapter 5

Always the shortest of the interstitial texts, this expanded with the end of Perhaps the biggest change from the synopsis was bringing forward the Amon-Ra/Amaterasu/Susanoo plot as the counter-plot to the issue. It was a case of me realising it served as a distraction, but also a useful human arc to them. I wanted to see it. If I wanted to see it, it implies that the reader would too.

Obviously Minerva is the player to watch at this point. I'm reminded of one of the minor influences  on Minerva – namely, Alice of Wonderland fame. I say the core stuff earlier, but there's a bunch of that kind of thing.

Really nice how Sergio fills the half page at the end of this sequence – as I've said on twitter, it's interesting that many people have said “Most” of the comic is prose. That's not true – the majority of the book is comics. Prose just takes longer to read in the same given space. For readers, I get it, but it did grate slightly when reviewers did it. Basic fact-checking is the basic minimum.

36-39

We finally get Morrigan' dialogue in comics form – it was the first Morrigan wrote. Courier seemed the right choice.

I laughed when writing TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. No, this is not what Woolf was writing about.

40-42

Chapter 6.

The Modernists' last flourish – I was considering doing this section in the style of From the Lighthouse, with the floating perspective and virtuoso parenthesis use, but decided it wasn't worth the risk. Even if done in the parodic style, it's still a huge risk, and not necessarily one which will travel to more than a proportion of the audience. Plus, this is the Explain Everything To The Readers bit, so we really do want it to be clear.

I did consider going back to it at the last minute after I had done this take, but decided against it, in favour of a heavy smattering of Modernist injokes. Most obvious is that Orlando opens with Orlando playing around with someone's decapitated head.

43-49

And the climatic fight scene!  Where things get sillier, but also more pointed. The ironic distance is opening up again with the cards.

“It's not all fine” a flirtation with WicDiv's core “It's going to be okay”

I kind of admire Susanoo's determination to pretend it isn't all this bad.

Aud suggested the multiple panels on 43 to show the disappearing of the light, which is a good call.

I also feel a little iffy about the quasi-Wells of Urdr – he's a mess of faults, and certainly was fond of many of these ideas, but he also was an avowed pacifist. I suspect he's the flip of Woolf – she got her hero spotlight in Uber, and now we get a twisted take. He appears like he does here, murdered after he gets in over his head while not realising what was actually happening, and is someone considerably more heroic in Spangly New Thing. But you'll have to wait for that, right?

Set's blowing of them apart is A+. And the dagger-twist of the core quote of Room of One's Own is... well, it's hyperbolic, but if you read Room, it's absolutely there. Room is an economic argument as much as anything else.

The final sequence being a Keaton-stunt married to pure-cinema-magic train creation (a nod towards the famous L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat which reputedly had people running out the cinema as they thought a train was going to hit them).  Metaphorically, a lot of people were like Baal here. They got run over too.

There were some dialogue tweaks here to ensure clarity – Minerva's “Goodbye Set” to ensure it was clear it was Set who was alive.

50-52

Chapter 7!

If I went the FULL HOMAGE route, if Chapter 6 was going to be a To The Lighthouse homage, the first section of this would have been written as a screenplay while the second bit would be written like a propaganda news report. Ultimately, I don't think we needed to disrupt the reader any more than we already did.

Especially as clarity here is absolutely the key thing – we have a statement in Chapter 6 of what Set/Baal thought they were doing... and now we have a different reading presented by Ananke to the gods of light and then ANOTHER reading of what Woden thought he was going on with the Zeitgeist which is then immediately undercut by Ananke.

The key thing was making the mystery of it as plain as possible – we give you what we can, and then underline the fact “Perhaps someone will work it out” of it.

(Minor detail here, ala Alice – Woden gets  Lovecraftian nod with the Colour Out Of Space)

Ananke's last lines came to me as wrapping it up, and one of those “Yes, this is exactly how to end this)

I suspect for all the monstering of the modernists, there's more of a fundamental ambivalence than you expect. If given a choice between Art Elitism and fascism or populist arts and advanced consumerism, I'd choose the latter... but doesn't mean the latter is ideal, especially when it's clear how all the gods of light have been played as much as the literary gods. As always with WicDiv, we're not really interested in easy answers.

53-54

And once more we return.

Back tomorrow, where Mothering Invention kicks off.

Thanks for reading.

[idiosyncreant]

QUEEN IN-HYUN’S MAN - A Rewatch Review

This is not the post I was expecting to write, when I went into this rewatch. Despite the dramatic potential of saving it for the end to reveal why, I’m actually going to lead with it: I really enjoyed this drama, but the last two episodes had some choices I strongly disagreed with.

Takeaway? Writer Song Jae Jung actually didn’t go that off the rails in W: Two Worlds; this has been the way she plays it all along.

[spoilers throughout - if you haven’t watched yet scroll on by. Review for those who wanna watch: this is worth looking into tho an older drama, come back and read my critique afterward. XP]

FIRST, THE GOOD STUFF

The great bulk of this show held up to rewatching. If you do not already know, I cannot explain to you how sexy it is to watch Kim Boong Do navigate modern day Korea with his Confucian scholar logic. I had forgotten how quickly he starts evaluating the clothes surrounding him--and figures out a situation in which he can obtain them. Unlike most heroes, he mugs no one for clothing?

(It helps he’s on a set.)

And then, there’s the fact that we get this set up that Choi Hee Jin is an ordinary girl. However, through the whole drama she is supported by the narrative, rather than undermined. It’s made clear that her acting has improved from the past because of her effort, and she gets the role on her own terms (despite what her ex wants her to think). 

She has been studying how to pronounce archaic Korean and does it well. And then... there’s this beautiful exchange. She’s claiming to have destroyed the talisman to trap him in the modern world, and he argues she knows what having it get cut did to them. “I’m stupid, so I totally forgot about that, and did it,” she lies.

Because here’s the thing: Kim Boong Do deduces a lot of what is going on around him, and he learns and memorizes information fast. But if it weren’t for Choi Hee Jin catching on when he wasn’t understanding something, he wouldn’t have gotten far.

The other thing I loved in their relationship (that is rare in any media, never mind trendy rom-com k-drama) is how they teased each other. Choi Hee Jin kept pulling Kim Boong Do’s leg, and because he’s clever, he reads through it. And he responds in kind.

In most writers’ hands the way they lie to each other would be taken dead serious and be a communication killer--but she’s a kidder, and he’s got a sense of humor.

Even when she uses lying to cover for her feelings, he never makes it about calling her out--instead he plays along until she can be truthful.

They’re a great improv duo, is I guess what I’m saying here.

I also love that Choi Hee Jin never gets shamed for being totally into him. Even if she gets busted for being impulsive about this kind of thing. Kim Boong Do is hugely amused when her manager says she finds ways to kiss boys she likes:

The thing is--Kim Boong Do totally digs it. The next opportunity he makes his own “modern goodbye” move.

NOW, THE TROUBLING STUFF

In Episode 14 I started to get uneasy. It seemed like the drama, as I remembered it, was wrapped. Why were there two episodes left?

Because. The writer wanted to cause Kim Boong Do more pain. This would have been enough, the fact that he did leave his whole life and purpose and legacy behind in Joseon:

I LOVE THAT HE GETS TO CRY ABOUT THIS.

However, he gets yanked back into his old world with a new rule added to the talisman’s effects at the eleventh hour: Yoon Wol, the gisaeng who created it, is killed and he is brought back as the talisman turns black.

Apparently her intent to have it save him boomerangs if she dies so instead his life is put in even more danger. Her murder without compunction feels a little off-tone for a drama in which lives were risked many times but our hero was always able to come through--in fact, when he would have been declared dead in Joseon, he is saved. Yoon Wol is given no such grace.

And so Kim Boong Do ends up disgraced, in prison, and believes himself doomed. So he commits suicide.

Wait. What? Yep. But now Choi Hee Jin’s phone works across the centuries, and becomes his new talisman. First it causes him to fight his way out of the noose he’s made for himself, then when he answers it pulls him into her timeline.

The one thing I liked in this rather digressive plotline was how quickly they let Choi Hee Jin put it together, even thought she had forgotten him. (I much prefer, though, the earlier way they handled her remembering Kim Boong Do when no one else did--that she accepted she was hallucinating and was in therapy about these false memories. Because that is what a real person would do!)

There were other things that could have been done in the two episodes to add some tension or resolve some themes--there could have been a strategy save Yoon Wol from unhappiness and bring her to a place where Kim Boong Do noted she could be respected as an entertainer. We could have seen the couple having to actually go public with their relationship so her ex would finally get off her back, and deal with fallout.

Like, there is so much scope for fun with all the denial the other boy is in...

But instead we got a cheap hit with a woman, vulnerable because she is in a job where men consider her fair game, killed just to make the hero miserable and cause him to fall from grace. 

Without him getting to redeem himself--he just escapes. It’s out of character and frankly puts too much importance on his romance over his actual life. It’s one thing to take arrows because there is no other way to vindicate the queen, and there’s a strong chance he’ll get the care to survive once he time-travels. It’s another thing altogether to try to hang himself with the tie that stands for their relationship’s intimacy.

But the fun of their relationship was its strongest appeal. I mean, watch this man run a scam:

We could have had at least a half an episode more of this kind of thing.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

First, I don’t regret my passionate love of this story. I still think all the things that this drama did well were actually intentional and not just what I wanted to see.

My main sadness is seeing that there is a writer out there who does so many things I really enjoy, who has a creativity with SFnal concepts that go well beyond what most shows do--who has a pattern of letting her own themes and characters down.

(I didn’t watch Nine: Nine Time Travels but from what I did catch while it was releasing makes me think it also follows this trend.)

And while I definitely do not need to fix this drama with a sprawling rewrite--there may be a short story to revise those last two episodes in my future.

[just-sort-of-happened]

Charlie as Sherlock or John

Hey just wanted to share a theory I thought about when I was talking with @bobenlugares and @ofeliaenellago who were kind enough to have me as a guest on their upcoming podcast.  (this is their most recent podcast if you missed it, it’s in spanish).

We were discussing what we thought of the case with the man who dies trapped in his car.  I was saying that on the surface narrative, it was our entry point into the mystery of why people were smashing Thatcher busts but on a symbolic level I thought it might be a reference to John and back to the case of the car backfire from ASiB.

As @loudest-subtext-in-tv has explained, the hitchhiker case can all be seen to be about John’s sexuality and his feelings towards Sherlock.  In Moffat’s previous show Coupling they talk about how a stalled car is obviously symbolic of a man’s impotence: his inability to get an erection.  The man in the car (who later comes to Baker Street seeking Sherlock’s help) can be seen as John in New Zealand, trying to run from his attraction to Sherlock but being unable to perform sexually with his girlfriend Sarah.  (This man is even wearing plaid which I see as coding for bisexual characters).

Well, if cars are about sexuality (much like trains, they are fuelled by fire and can enter tunnels) and fire is a classic symbol for sexual passion then we can imagine that man who suffocates in his car as John waiting to say something (to surprise) someone and then dying inside the car instead.

Remember in TEH when Sherlock says, ‘I think I’ll surprise John, ...jump out of a cake...’.  Well, Sherlock, himself, might also be seen as this man, waiting to surprise someone and then dying there instead, his body consumed by flames. By the time Sherlock does, indeed, surprise John it is much too late and he crashes and burns, so to speak: he gets beaten up and Mary takes John home.

Charlie is supposed to be in Tibet but he’s really already home.  Sherlock between TRF and TEH is supposed to be dead but he’s really away.  In MHR one of the places Anderson thinks Sherlock has been in is Tibet.

So a well-meaning man is trying to surprise someone but he hides too well and then he can no longer surprise the person.  Later he is destroyed by fire.  The actual man, Charlie, is definitely coded as gay, with his colourful clothing and happy demeanour; when he sees his father there’s a rainbow right over his face.  He is also trying to surprise his dad and Sherlock has implied that John is his dad at the end of TSoT when he calls himself John and Mary’s baby.  John also dresses as Sherlock’s actual dad, as we know. (from @slow-burn-bromance).  

So, Sherlock wants to surprise John but he hides too well.  This is pivotal because this is exactly the problem in Charlie’s death, if his disguise had been less convincing he might have been found and saved but because he was so well-hidden (as to seem to not be there, at all) that he was doomed.

Another thing that struck me was that in Sherlock’s reconstruction of what must have happened he speculated that Charlie must have had, ‘a seizure’, but watching that character box himself into that costume, in that car, to me, that felt really claustrophobic.  My first instinct was that Charlie might have inadvertently suffocated himself in his own costume.  Again, the act of hiding in and of itself being the thing that was most dangerous thing about this situation.  (Note that we see that Charlie’s costume has a frontal panel with perforated material to allow him to breathe but in real life we don’t see the exact design of his costume.  All we have are his very charred remains and two types of vinyl to go on: we do not know how Charlie designed his costume).

Another way to describe having a seizure is, ‘having a fit’, maybe this could be a play on words on someone getting angry.  Did Sherlock get angry at John and then it seemed like his love was over?  Does John get angry at Sherlock and then it seems like his love for him is over?  Certainly in TEH John clearly, ‘has a fit’, when he seems Sherlock for the first time and then twice more before the night is over.  By the end of TST, we see that John’s anger is again a barrier to him being with Sherlock, even as friends or associates.

The Power Ranger figure on the front of Charlie’s car reminds me of the conversation that John and Mycroft have in TRF at the Diogenes Club.  Frustrated with what he sees as petty sibling feuding, John remarks that the Holmes brothers’ root problem must be a fight over their childhood toys.  ‘Nicked all his smurfs?  Broke his action man?’.  The word, ‘nick’, has been used two other times and I think it may be suggestive of some sort of harm coming to John.  John is a fairly short man and we could see him as one of the smurfs that Sherlock might lose (maybe because of Mycroft).  And I’ve seen someone else make a post about John being Sherlock’s broken action man.  John is a soldier and certainly a man of action: Sherlock’s personal GI Joe, maybe.  By the end of TRF John is a broken (action) man.  The toy figurine on Charlie’s car might be an effigy, of sorts, for John, much like Guy Fawkes’ effigy in TEH that’s meant to burn just like actual John who’s trapped in the fire below.  John’s passions are consuming him.

I need to add a screencap here due to the incredibly phallic placement of a cable tie, showing this figure is bound to the hood of this car but also symbolically has an enormous erection that never goes away,

If we look at the first screenshot we see that the editing is similar to that of the first bomb victim in TGG.  She is trapped in a car, waiting to be rescued.  I see the bomb victims as being in the closet and waiting to come out and this would also go along with the idea that Charlie is a stand-in for Sherlock or John.  They’re in hiding, they’re waiting, maybe unlike the bomb victims, they’re not trapped but they’re waiting for the right moment.  But when reticence is excessive the right moment passes.  Remember how many times John chastises Sherlock about his poor, ‘timing’?  Ditto for Charlie here, he waits just a second too long and his plan goes terribly wrong.